


our hearts know deeper seasons than our memories

by if_i_be_waspish



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: AU obviously, Arthur is a tattoo artist, Complete, F/M, Tattoo Parlour AU, This is the AU your momma warned you about, You're Welcome, so is Moffat lol, this is the AU exactly no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2019-12-25 16:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18264782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/if_i_be_waspish/pseuds/if_i_be_waspish
Summary: Alex is a renowned tattoo artist based in Los Angeles and Matt is a hopeful apprentice who literally stumbles into her shop one near-spring day.xMatt scoffs, leaning his back against the brick wall, “Oi!” He narrows his eyes at her a bit, “You’re British, too.”She laughs, and Matt feels the sound slip into his veins and mingle with his blood. It’s the most tantalizing sound he’s possibly ever heard, “Yes,” she agrees, her accent thick, “But I’ve been here well on fifteen years now.” She chuckles, eyeing him, “So, tell me – what use could I possibly have for you, darling?” Her eyes rake down his frame and back up again, and then she blinks at him innocently.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic in the middle of writing Press Promises... and I can tell you this very nearly did not see the light of day. It's only seeing it now very reluctantly. 
> 
> Title from "Bees" by The Ballroom Thieves.

Alex Kingston sits hunched over a sketchbook, her pencil scratching lightly against the thick paper. Her strawberry blonde curls are held back by a blue bandana tied in a haphazard knot at the top of her head. The material is soft, and the color is faded, and she should probably really get rid of it, but she can’t. It’s the first one she ever bought, and she’s been known for being strangely nostalgic, even if the situation doesn’t call for it. Sometimes, especially if it doesn’t. So she keeps the bandana, though its glory days are quite behind it. She rather knows the feeling.

It’s the same bandana her husband hated on her and used to threaten to throw out: _honestly, what are you? Alex the Riveter? You’re not even_ bloody _American_.

She’d gone out the next day and bought one with the Union Jack on it, just to piss her husband off.

God, he was an asshole. The first one, not the second. Well. The second one a bit at the end, if she’s honest.

She tips her pencil on its end and erases an errant line in her drawing, constantly amazed at how easy it is to correct her mistakes on a drawing pad. Comparatively speaking, anyway. Her life was riddled with mistakes, almost none of them easily fixable with a quick swipe of rubber across paper – she couldn’t simply _erase_ her marriages, could she? There was more paperwork, more signing, more relief that she’d always kept her maiden name, that she didn’t have to stand in endless lines to change names that would inevitably remind her of the men who’d left her if she kept them. Thank goodness for small favors, at least.

Alex fixes the line she erased, scrunching her glasses up on her nose, too intent on drawing to pause and adjust them with her hand. They slide down almost immediately, and she huffs, scrunching her nose up again.

“ _Damned things_ ,” she mutters, still not used to having to deal with the frames, having only had them for six months. Ever since she turned 48, things started going a bit downhill – and that was – well, that was a year ago. Today. Today is the anniversary of the day she turned 48 – _you’re 49, Alex, not saying it won’t make it any less true_.

Sighing, Alex sits up straighter and whips her glasses off her face, peering down at the paper in front of her – a perfectly symmetrical owl stares back at her, its eyes bright and wide, its beak thin and narrow, it’s feathers slightly fluffy. It’s got a bit of a cartoon look, per request, and wears just a hint of a smile. A moon hangs in the background, perfect, full, and round. Holding the drawing out a bit farther from herself, Alex tilts her head, making sure all is right. When she’s satisfied, she slips it into a manila folder bearing her client’s name and then tucks it away in her drawer.

She tosses her glasses on her workstation and glances at her watch – 10am, and she’d already been up for three hours – very early for someone in her industry, full of mostly night owls, but she’d always been a morning person. _He’s late_ , Alex thinks, _not the best start for someone looking for a bloody job_.

The door of the shop opens, and Alex turns her head, though she needn’t bother, she knows exactly who it is by the clomping of the clunky heels on the hardwood.

“I’m _sorry_ I’m late,” Karen winces, her voice loud and bright in the empty studio, her thick Scottish brogue carrying, “I was meant to be here an hour ago to help clean up, but – well, I overslept.” She shrugs, holding out a bag and a drink carrier filled with three drinks, “And then I had to stop and get all this,” she explains, slinging her purse down on the floor near the little kitchenette. She tosses her long red hair over her shoulder, then creeps slowly forward towards Alex, trying to ascertain whether she’s mad or not.

When she’s standing near Alex, Karen dangles the bag a bit and thrusts the drink carrier forward, a hopeful look on her face.

Alex can’t help it – she smiles despite herself. She’d always had a soft spot for Karen. Silly, wild, free, legs-for-days Karen, over two decades younger than Alex and still somehow one of the best friends Alex had ever had.

“What’s this, then?” Alex asks, reaching out to take the proffered bag.

Karen looks vaguely affronted, “You’d not thought I’d forgot your birthday, had you? 49!” Karen claps excitedly, bouncing up and down a bit on her heels.

Alex winces, “I’d rather hoped you had,” she shakes her head, unrolling the paper bag, “The day will come, Miss Gillan, when birthdays aren’t _quite_ the cause for celebration they once were.”

Karen sets the drink carrier on Alex’s workstation, “Oh, _please_ ,” she rolls her eyes, “If I look even _half_ as good as you do when I’m 49, every single day will be cause for celebration.” She wriggles a frothy drink with whipped cream out of the carrier, peels the cover off the straw, and takes a sip.

Alex opens the bag and peers inside – in the bag sits a single cupcake, red velvet, with a single candle protruding from the top. It’s her favorite flavor, from her favorite shop, and Alex feels an unexpected swell of emotion flood through her stomach and lodge itself in her throat. _You will not cry over a bloody cupcake, Alex_ , she tells herself.

“Oh, Karen,” Alex says, gently setting the bag on the table behind her. She stands and hugs her, taking the girl a bit by surprise. “Thank you,” she says, and she hears the watery quality of her voice. _You will not cry_ very much _over a bloody cupcake, Alex_.

Karen laughs, hugging Alex back, “You’re welcome – happy birthday, Alex,” she pulls away and grabs another drink out of the carrier, handing it to Alex, “I forgot a lighter, though – so we’ll have to wait for Darvill,” Karen looks at the clock on the wall, “ _If_ he ever shows up.” Karen glances around the empty studio, “Hey, where’s the new guy?”

Alex swallows the bit of sugary coffee she’d just taken a sip of and points a finger at Karen, “He’s not the new guy yet. And at this rate, he likely never will be.” Alex sighs, sitting back down in her chair, “He’s fifteen minutes late.”

“I know you’re part German, Alex, but give him a break – he’s probably lost,” Karen sits on the little couch in the corner, “He’s English in Los Angeles.” She says, by way of explanation.

Alex stares at her, a smirk on her face, “Yes, well, _we_ all manage to do just fine.”

“Oi! I am _Scottish_ , not English!” Karen protests, her brow furrowed a bit in the middle.

Alex smiles, raising her eyebrows, “Yes, precisely. And even _you_ manage to find your way around.”

Karen’s jaw drops open, “You’ve been hanging out with Darvill too much, going to all those bloody concerts – you weren’t this anti-Scot when I met you!”

Alex laughs, taking a hearty sip of her drink and speaking around the straw, “I’m only anti-sunburns and hangovers, Karen.” The drink is sinfully delicious, it’s Alex’s favorite from the coffee shop just across the street, the one with the sign with different funny sayings on it every day. Today’s was: _you know, in 3 hours, you can travel across an entire country in Europe, or you can travel 40 miles in Los Angeles._

She shouldn’t drink these, she knows, they go straight to her hips and bypass all of the really fun places, but it tastes so sweet and wonderful, and it _is_ her birthday after all – she’s a bit too old these days to drown her sorrows in tequila shots, so she figures sugary coffee drinks are the next best thing.

Karen is about to make a quip, Alex can tell, because she’s got that _I’ve got one!_ Look on her face, but the sound of the buzzer rips through the studio, and the look falls from her face, replaced with one of brief terror. Karen places a hand to her heart, her breathing coming slightly faster, “I don’t know why you have that volume turned up like that – how you and Darvill aren’t jabbing people with needles and making them yelp in pain every time that bloody thing goes off is beyond me,” she shakes her head.

Alex looks at her pointedly, and Karen stares back confusedly before Alex glances at the buzzer situated right next to the door.

Karen smiles, “Oh, right!” She hops up from the couch, her long and lean body carrying her across the shop in five strides. She looks at the screen, squinting a bit, “Must be the new guy.” She presses the buzzer, opening the door downstairs, and then grins at Alex, jabbing a thumb back at herself, “Shop assistant, me.”

Alex laughs gently, shaking her head – _oh, Karen_. “The only one I’ve got.”

Alex sits patiently, staring at the door, hearing the slow ascent of footsteps in the hall. She sees a figure appear behind the glass panes of the French doors, tall and lean, and she finds herself sitting a bit on the edge of her seat, not quite knowing what to expect.

Whatever she was expecting, it certainly wasn’t the tall, gangly man stumbling through the door and nearly breaking the glass panes of the doors as they slammed against the wall. He manages to just catch himself as he pitches forward across the threshold, his arms splaying out clutching at air. It is the most ridiculous thing Alex has ever seen, and she barely contains a laugh as he straightens himself, his large hands brushing over his t-shirt, his face the brightest red she’s ever seen in her life. What bit of his ears she can see peeking through his chestnut brown hair look like they’re on fire, and he looks at Alex a bit helplessly, his mouth opening and then closing again.

“Alright?” She asks, crossing her arms over her chest, and drawing her bottom lip into her mouth in an attempt to bite back a smile.

“Yeah,” he runs his hand through his hair, his long fingers combing through the long locks, “Sorry. I do that sometimes – a bit clumsy, I suppose.”

Alex arches her brow at him, “Late _and_ clumsy,” she tuts at him, “Not the best first impression, I think.”

She considers him, watches as the blush spreading across his long face deepens, crawling down his neck just above the collar of his t-shirt. He is _young_ , and tall, and lanky, and strangely attractive. Alex takes in his body, lean and clothed in jeans that are a bit tight, and a plain white t-shirt that stretches across his chest. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to find his words, and Alex feels a stirring in her stomach, which immediately spreads even lower than that. _Oh_.

“Sorry,” he says, quite sincerely, and it’s been so long since she’s heard that word fall from a man’s lips honestly that Alex is a bit taken aback, “Traffic,” he winces, clearly knowing it’s a flimsy excuse at best, since even people who don’t live in Los Angeles know you have to leave at least an hour before you think you need to be anywhere, even if it’s ‘just across town.’ “And the parking signs,” he chuckles, stepping a bit further into the room, “It’s like deciphering bloody hieroglyphics,” he grins, “And my ancient Egyptian is a bit rusty.”

Alex snorts at that, finding it a bit funny despite herself, and Karen guffaws from the couch in the corner. At the sound, the man startles, turning to the corner where Karen sits. Karen gives him a little wave, and he waves and smiles back, before turning to face Alex again.

His gaze slides over her body, and Alex turns her head, looking at him curiously. Catching her staring at him, he flushes again, then steps closer to her, “I’m Matt.” He introduces himself, “Matt Smith.” He reaches his hand out.

Alex looks at his hand appraisingly – he has large hands, long fingers, even more so up close – and she feels that stirring again. Schooling her features so as not to belie the panic she feels at the fact that she is apparently very attracted to the man standing before her, she grasps his hand in hers, shaking a bit, trying not to concentrate on how firm his grip is, how pleasantly warm his hand is. She tries not to wonder precisely what he could do _to her_ with that hand.

Startled by the thought, she pulls her hand away, clearing her throat.

“It’s a pleasure – an _honor_ actually – to meet you, Miss Kingston.”

Alex laughs, “ _Alex_ ,” She steps back from him, feeling suddenly dizzy at the nearness of him, “Miss Kingston is – well, not even my mother.” She shrugs, “Just Alex.”

He – _Matt_ – grins at her, “Well, Just Alex, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He leans in a bit closer to her, and the fresh clean scent of _him_ envelops her, “I’m a longtime fan of your work, it’s just – _brilliant_ ,” he praises enthusiastically.

Alex looks in his eyes, they’re a deep and expressive hazel – a strange color as unique as her own, and he is looking at her so openly that it feels almost tender, and for a second it feels as though no one has looked at her like that in a very long time. Like maybe no one has _ever_ looked at her like that, and she feels her heart flutter in her chest.

_Oh_.

x

The Fairfax district is the most confusing bloody thing Matt Smith has ever seen. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but in the moment, it feels like it’s the truth. It’s a lovely neighborhood, he’s sure, with pretty houses and quiet streets save the random cars lining every single street.

There’s a Jewish school on the corner, and Matt tries to decipher the parking signs, but it takes him a good three minutes before he realizes he can’t actually park his car there because it’s a school day. He moves on, finally finding metered parking that lasts longer than fifteen minutes. Shoving his card into the meter and selecting the maximum time, Matt sighs.

He is late – his first (and he hopes _only_ ) interview for an apprenticeship here in Los Angeles, and he’s _late_. He’d left in plenty of time – at least, he thought he had, but there had been an accident on the 10, and an accident on the 405, and he’d ended up late and struggling for parking. So very much not the first impression he wanted to give the renowned and brilliant tattoo artist Alex Kingston.

Jamming his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, Matt half-jogs down the sidewalk of the Fairfax district, trying to hurry but still maintain an even gait. He isn’t known for being the most graceful of creatures, to say the very least.

As he makes his way, he notices graffiti on the sidewalks, little clever sayings that make him chuckle a bit even as he hurries his stride. Little restaurants line the street, and Matt passes a coffee shop with a funny sign outside before jaywalking across the street and looking for the address of the shop, glancing down at his phone, watching the little blue dot of his GPS – him – hovering right on top of the shop. Still not finding it, he walks a bit further down, looking for a sign – finding none, he walks down an alley, his eyes glued to his GPS. When he’s once again on top of the shop, according to his Maps, he glances up and finally sees the shop sign: _Kingston Tattoo Parlour_.

The sign is old and weathered, but it looks like it’s been made to look that way, and the way it contrasts with the stark white of the building is striking. Matt grins, feeling a little roil of excitement rippling in his stomach – he’d not been an apprentice for long back in the UK, but he’d somehow fallen into the good graces of one of the UK’s best, Steven Moffat, and it was Moffat that had made the call to Alex Kingston on Matt’s behalf when he’d decided to move to LA. Taking a steadying breath, Matt presses the buzzer, shuffling a bit nervously on his feet, peering into the buzzer, which also appears to be a video camera. Frowning, he’s just about to press the button again when a light buzzing sound unlocks the door.

Hurriedly pulling it open, Matt steps into the shop, finding himself at the bottom of a narrow staircase. He takes a moment, looking at the signs on the walls – clever things and brilliant paintings, and a hand-painted sign in pretty scrawl that says _absolutely no entourages_. Matt smiles, making his way up the stairs to the shop, the hardwood creaking gently under his boots as he ascends. With each step, he feels the nerves in his stomach swell, and by the time he reaches the glass paned French doors, his stomach has tied itself in knots.

He inhales once, deeply, then lets it out, placing his hand on the door handle. He pushes gently, creaking the door open and stepping forward and then he _trips_ – of course he bloody well trips – right into the studio, nearly falling on his face as the glass rattles in the panes of the door as they slam against the wall. He stumbles, just managing to catch himself before he hits the ground, and he can immediately feel his face aflame.

_God_ , he is such an idiot – such a clumsy idiot. He doesn’t want to look up – he wants to turn around, run right down the stairs and back into his car, drive to LAX, and catch the first flight home – he’s halfway through figuring out if he has enough money in his bank account to purchase the one-way ticket when he accidentally glances up and sees her.

_Alex Kingston_.

He’s seen pictures, of course, read articles – articles maybe he shouldn’t have, but seeing her in person is something altogether different. Her hair is backlit by one of the three skylights in the studio, her curls piled atop her head, held in rebellious place by a faded blue bandana. She’s wearing a black tank top, and her left arm is covered in the most colorful, beautiful tattoos Matt has ever seen. She’s a _vision_ , and Matt feels inexplicably drawn to her already.

She takes the piss out of him a bit, and honestly, he’d expect no less. He makes a quip about the parking signs, which isn’t entirely untrue, but all the while he can’t take his eyes off of her, off of Alex, and he feels an odd tightening in his chest when she smiles at his joke.

A guffaw from the corner of the room startles him, and he turns to see a young woman with long red hair – Matt hadn’t even noticed her, hadn’t even realized he and Alex weren’t alone in the room to begin with. The woman waves, and he waves back before turning his gaze directly back to Alex.

He introduces himself to Alex, and her palm is so soft and warm against his own. His fingers envelop hers, and he tries not to think about how lovely and delicate her hands are – tries very hard not to think about how erotic he suddenly finds it that she creates stunning and quite sought after artwork on people’s skin with her small, delicate, capable hands.

In _Inked Magazine_ she looked beautiful, her hair floating about her head like a halo – but up close and personal, not airbrushed and without a stitch of makeup on that he can see, _she is breathtaking_. Matt stares at her a bit too long, he knows he does, but he can’t help it – her eyes are this seafoam green color, maybe blue, he can’t be sure, and he feels his heart thump wildly in his chest. He can’t explain it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that it won’t belong to him for very much longer.

She will take it from him, his heart, and there won’t be a damn thing he can do to stop her – the thought should scare him, but it doesn’t – it makes him feel safe, weirdly, and he knows this odd feeling must reflect in his eyes because now she’s looking at him strangely.

Matt smiles, taking a step back and glances around the shop. It’s got vaulted ceilings, and the ceiling itself is a beautiful wood, painted white, with three clear oval skylights on the slanted back of the building. It reminds Matt a little bit of a church, in a weird way, the exposed brick of the walls lending a bit of an old-timey feel to the place. Artwork lines the walls, floor to ceiling, hand painted pieces – some odd, some quirky, some gory, some beautiful.

Matt lets out a low whistle, “This is a beautiful shop – a beautiful space.”

Alex clears her throat, “Thank you.” She follows his eyes up to the skylights, “The influx of natural light really sold me on the place.”

Matt grins, his gaze dropping to her face now illuminated by the natural light streaming through the glass, “I can see why. It’s beautiful.”

She drops her head and meets his gaze, and he swears he can see a flush crawl across her face, but it’s faint – she doesn’t blush like he does. Hell, _no one_ blushes like he does, all bright red and angry.

Alex clears her throat and nods her head towards a little natural wood bench pushed up against a wall situated next to what he assumes is her workstation. Matt takes a seat, smoothing his palms over his jeans, trying to tamp down the nerves in his stomach and failing quite miserably.

She takes the seat across from him, and he takes in the planes of her face – her nose, which suits her face, her lips, so full and when she drags her teeth across the bottom one in thought, he finds himself wanting to follow its path, wondering if she would taste as sweet as she smells. _This is a bloody job interview, Smith_ , _get it together_. He shakes his head a bit, as though that small act would be enough to clear the visage of Alex Kingston from his mind when she’s sitting directly in front of him.

“So, Mr. Smith,” Alex starts, leaning back in her chair.

“Just Matt,” he grins at her, and she rolls her eyes.

“ _Matt_ ,” she sighs, tugging her bottom lip with her teeth again, and he can tell she’s trying not to smile, “So – you want to be an apprentice. _My_ apprentice, specifically.”

Matt nods, raising his eyebrows at her, “Yes.”

Alex eyes him, and he feels _watched_ under her gaze, like she sees every part of him – it’s a bit unnerving, “Okay – and why should I hire you?” She asks, and the question feels rhetorical, but he’s not sure, “You’ve got no clientele. According to my sources, you’ve barely tattooed before, and you’ve got no name to draw business through the door, which isn’t very good for a shop that’s appointment-only – you’re a foreign quantity, Matt, quite literally.”

Matt scoffs, leaning his back against the brick wall, “Oi!” He narrows his eyes at her a bit, “You’re British, too.”

She laughs, and Matt feels the sound slip into his veins and mingle with his blood. It’s the most tantalizing sound he’s possibly ever heard, “Yes,” she agrees, her accent thick, “But I’ve been here well on fifteen years now.” She chuckles, eyeing him, “So, tell me – what use could I possibly have for you, darling?” Her eyes rake down his frame and back up again, and then she blinks at him innocently.

Matt’s jaw drops open in surprise, and he feels suddenly lightheaded, likely because all the blood in his body is currently heading to one specific place, and _oh_ , it would not do to get an erection _now_. He tries to focus on her question, because she’s clearly waiting for him to answer, and he could maybe think of an answer if her voice hadn’t sounded so bloody sexy asking him that question – if it didn’t sound so _low_ and, quite frankly, _dirty_.

Truth is, he could think of at least two dozen uses she could have for him, and he’d have great fun with all of them, but none of them are even remotely appropriate, and exactly zero are likely to get him this job. His mind can’t even go _near_ the endearment that just rolled off her tongue – because he suddenly wants to hear that little word – _darling_ \- panted breathlessly into his ear, just before _his_ tongue rolls off other things that are decidedly hers.

“I – I’m a quick study, fast learner – always have been. And I don’t mind scut work, honestly.”

“We’ve got a shop assistant for all of that,” Alex’s eyes dart over her shoulder to the ginger girl sitting in the corner of the room, “Not that she does much scut work around here. Or _any_ work, really.” Alex grins, and the girl in the corner sits up.

“I work _very_ hard around here, I’ll have you know. Cleaning up after Darvill after he tattoos should be a fulltime job, honestly. And I should get hazard pay.” She grumbles, muttering a bit to herself.

Alex shakes her head lightly, turning her attention back to Matt, “You _do_ come highly recommended, though – by Steven Moffat, which I don’t take lightly.” Her eyes alight on his arms, and Matt tenses, knows what she’s looking for, and he braces himself for the question, “How many tattoos do you have, then?” Alex asks, her tone curious.

Matt curses his skin as he feels another flush settle on his face, “I-” He presses his eyes shut momentarily before opening them again and sighing, “None.”

Alex raises her eyebrows in surprise, and he can practically feel the incredulity coming off of her in waves.

“I – erm – see, I’m a bit – bit scared of needles, that is when I’m not the one doing the poking.” He explains, and it sounds ridiculous even to his own ears.

“Scared of needles?” Alex is entirely unimpressed, Matt can tell, and he doesn’t blame her.

A tattoo artist with no tattoos is ridiculous, he knows. He’s just squeamish when it comes to a needle jabbing into his own skin at high velocity for hours at a time. And, truthfully, he’d never met anyone he trusted enough to tattoo him. It felt a very personal thing, intimate even, and everyone he met tried to talk or cajole him into it, and there were several times he’d ended up in a chair only to fly up out of it at the last minute.

Matt tended to be overly sentimental sometimes, and he knew that whoever tattooed him would be marking him – literally and figuratively – for the rest of his life. He would never be able to forget them or let them go, and he’d never wanted to let anyone get that close, truthfully. He’d come the closest to letting Moffat tattoo him, but hadn’t gone through with it in the end, that last bit of trust or _something_ unnamable still missing.

Matt runs a hand through his hair, mussing it a bit, and he watches Alex’s eyes follow the path of his hand, “I understand it’s ridiculous.”

She considers him, staring at him pensively, as though she knows there’s more to his reasoning that he’s not telling, but she lets it go, “It’s certainly unconventional, I’ll give you that.”

Matt chuckles nervously, scratching his face, “Look – I’m a great fan of your work. I think you’re brilliant – and you’re right, I don’t have all those things you mentioned before, but I can promise you that I will work tirelessly to get them. I know – I know hiring me is a big chance, but if you take it, I promise you won’t regret it.” He rushes the words out, and he knows he might appear a bit overeager, but he can’t help it. He’s admired Alex Kingston’s work for years now, her clean lines, her beautiful color, her perfect images. “Just – think about it, okay?”

Alex sighs, drawing her bottom lip into her teeth again. She smiles at him, but it’s wary, and he immediately knows she’s not convinced.

She stands, and Matt takes it as his cue to stand, following her across the shop, the hardwood floor squeaking in places under their feet. When they’re near the French doors he first stumbled through nearly moments before, she turns to look at him, “I’ll think about it, Matt, but right now – I feel I must let you know, it’s leaning quite strongly towards no.”

“I understand, Alex.” He says, as she pulls open the French doors for him, “I know Moff sent over my portfolio, just have another look at it. Consider me.” He says simply, before crossing over the threshold – without tripping this time – and down the stairs.

He steps into the alley and into the Los Angeles sun and fishes his sunglasses out of his jeans pocket – he’s not sure how they even fit in there, but they do. He slides them on his nose and crosses the street. He’s still got nearly two hours left on his meter – he’d been a bit too optimistic, apparently, so he steps into the little coffee shop, orders an Americano, and sits at the little table outside.

Matt watches schoolgirls go by, dressed in long plaid skirts and navy long-sleeved shirts, and he smiles – he’d always quite enjoyed people watching. The girls look so young and carefree, and it leaves him feeling a bit nostalgic.

His life hadn’t really gone to plan – nothing had gone as he’d expected, and this reality seems to hit him at the most random moments. He’d wanted to be a footballer, had a real shot at it too, until he’d hurt his back and discovered he had an underlying back condition – at sixteen, he watched it all fall away, every hope, dream, plan he’d had for his life. He drifted a bit, taking odd jobs, going to Uni, but he hadn’t found anything he truly had a passion for until he found tattooing, and shortly after that he’d found acting. The two things together seemed to sustain him, seemed to lessen the pain of not being able to see his first dream through.

He knew what it felt like to have a body that didn’t let you do the things you wanted so desperately to do. His own body had rebelled against him – had taken so much away from him, and so he felt himself oddly drawn to body modification. Shortly after Uni, he talked his way into an apprenticeship in Cardiff with one of the best tattoo artists in the UK, Steven Moffat, and Matt had found himself feeling happy for the first time in a long while.

Between tattooing and acting, he found a home in something other than sports. In the same way body modification called to him, so did acting – it allowed him to step into the life of someone else, to embody their hopes and dreams for hours or months at a time. In those moments, he didn’t feel what he had lost – what had been ripped from him – so acutely, and he found himself living for those moments he got to bring a character to life. And eventually, his dreams changed – they took on a new shape and he didn’t spend most of his waking moments thinking about who he could have been if his body had allowed him to be it.

He’d ultimately moved to LA to pursue acting, honestly, but he still wanted to keep tattooing at the forefront of his mind, knowing that they both helped him forget all he’d lost.

Matt sighs in the LA sunshine now, sipping his coffee, thinking about Alex Kingston. Her reputation precedes her, of course, a woman in a male-dominated industry, and she is amazing at what she does. She’d built her shop from the ground up, made a name for herself in a city that wasn’t her native home.

Now, people travel from all over the world to get a piece tattooed from her. Matt had been in awe of her for years, following her career, reading every interview she’s ever done – so meeting her in person was a dream, and somehow still more spectacular than he’d even anticipated.

Alex is _magnetic_. There’s no other way to describe her, really. He feels drawn to her, and it’s something he can’t really explain. He wonders if she felt it too – she’d looked at him curiously, and she’d seemed a bit thrown off by him. She doesn’t really seem like the type, so it’s possible that what he’d felt at the touch of her hand wasn’t entirely one-sided.

Her work is brilliant, and something behind her eyes convinced him immediately that _she_ is brilliant, too.

Suddenly, he can’t let the chance go to waste – he _has_ to work with her, he has to make it happen. But he can’t go back into the shop – he can’t bear that quite yet. No, he needs a new plan. Smiling, he pulls out his cell phone, dialing a familiar number, holding it to his ear as he hears it ring one, twice, three times and then connect.

“Moff?” He asks into the phone, smiling when he hears the Scottish accent on the other end, “Yeah… hi. Listen, I need a bit of a favor, mate.”

Matt drums his fingers on the wire table outside the coffee shop, his eyes on the building just across the street – he’d convince Alex Kingston to take a chance on him – in more ways than one, if he had his way – if it was the last thing he did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why are you holding a candle?” Matt asks, “And a cupcake?”
> 
> Alex raises her eyebrows at him, watching the wheels turn in his head, and she sees the moment it clicks, “Kingston!” He gasps, “Is it – is today your birthday?”
> 
> She winces, turning around to glance at the clock behind her, “For another few hours, anyway.”

The day goes by quietly for Alex. She finishes up a few sketches for some clients and spends the hours as the sun descends finishing a rather elaborate forearm tattoo on one of her clients.

After she finishes tattooing, Karen and Darvill take her out to dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant that just so happens to be directly across from the shop. She eats fajitas and laughs and is generally appreciative of the fact that two of her coworkers have morphed into two of her closest friends, no matter how unconventional their friendship might be.

Alex hadn’t expected to hit it off with people so very much younger than her, but Karen and Arthur have an ease about them, brooding though Arthur may be, and Alex finds the friendships refreshing.

When her large margarita is drained dry, cushioned by the large quantity of chips and salsa she’d consumed, Alex stands and bids them farewell. They try to talk her into coming out with them – to a bar, to a club, to _anywhere_ , really.

“It’s your _birthday_ , Alex,” Arthur says, his deep voice carrying across the table.

Alex laughs, her hand cupping his cheek, “I know. But that doesn’t mean the same thing for me these days as it does for you.” Alex leans down and kisses Karen on the top of her head, “Have a lovely night,” she looks between them sternly, “And remember - _no shagging_. It’s against company policy, and as you both know, I’m quite the hard-ass.”

Karen chokes on her margarita when Alex mentions _shagging_ , and Arthur looks very nearly disgusted.

“Oh, _ew_.” Karen says, shaking her head, “Don’t make me feel so sick on such a full stomach, Alex,” Karen wrinkles her nose in displeasure.

Alex chuckles, “Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” she rolls her eyes, grabbing her bag from the back of her chair and slinging it over her shoulder, “Arthur’s rather easy on the eyes, I think.”

Alex watches Karen’s eyes dart to Arthur, and she sees Arthur shift in his seat a bit before he finally stands up, clears his throat, and presses a quick kiss to her cheek, lingering just a moment before pulling back. Alex looks at him a bit confusedly but smiles nonetheless.

“Happy birthday, Alex. I’m so glad you were born,” he offers, squeezing her hand and then sitting back down and attending to his margarita glass.

“Thank you, Arthur – you lot,” she looks between he and Karen again, pleased to see that whatever moment passed between them had truly passed, “Make me rather glad I was, too.” She picks up her glass of water from the table and takes one long drink before she sets it back down, “Now, have a lovely night celebrating my birth without me – and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She winks at them.

“Oh, so not very much we can’t do then, eh?” Karen asks, laughing.

Alex simply grins, spins on her heel, and walks across the restaurant, waving her hand behind her as she goes. She steps into the cool Los Angeles air and welcomes it on her face, pulling her cardigan tightly around her body. March in Los Angeles is really a mixed bag – for all its talk of year-round sunshine, it actually has a tendency to get rather cold, particularly at night. She welcomes the brisk air around her as she walks across the street to the shop – another birthday nearly over.

She climbs the steps to the studio, and when she gets there, she sits down for a moment, letting the weight of everything she’d spent the last two decades of her life building settle around her. She picks a book up from the side of her workstation and finds herself idly thumbing through Matt’s portfolio; he really _is_ quite good when you look at the work. Perhaps she’d been too hard on him – a little too closed off in a way that she knows has very little to do with his talent and very much to do with the way she finds herself feeling when she looks at him.

After she closes the portfolio and puts it back, she cleans up a bit, filing folders away, stashing pens, and then she grabs her cupcake, clutching the bag in her hand as she flicks off the lights and locks up.

The drive home is quiet and serene since she manages to take side streets back to her flat. She’d given up her house in her last divorce, though her ex-husband graciously offered it to her – she didn’t want it. She didn’t want anything that reminded her of a time when she used to be happy with him – and she didn’t want to live in that house all alone, having her daughter only half of the time. So, they’d sold it, split the money, and Alex found a little two-bedroom flat to rent behind an older woman’s house.

The woman – Edna – _loved_ Alex and her daughter, so she let them rent for very cheap, and she frequently brought over homemade casseroles and other dishes to ensure the two of them were eating properly. Being so far away from her own parents, Alex found Edna’s attention a great comfort, unexpected though it was when she first went searching for a place to live on her own for the first time in nearly two decades.

She’d always lived with someone, really – her family growing up, then roommates in Uni, then her first husband before they got married, her first husband after they got married, roommates again, her second husband – and so as much as Alex was looking forward to her independence, she was also a bit nervous about it all.

So Edna’s back house was precisely what she needed – on nights when she doesn’t want to be alone and her daughter is with her ex or at a friend’s, as pre-teens are wont to do, Alex knocks on Edna’s door and they share a bottle of white wine and watch a procedural, spending the entire time chatting and trying to guess whodunit.

Alex is usually right, which always impresses Edna, who’d never married. _Two husbands, Edna,_ Alex always reminds her, _I’m practically a human bullshit detector by now_.

As Alex pulls into the driveway tonight, she sees Edna’s lights are out – she kills her headlights and drives back to the back house and gets out of her car, closing the door quietly behind her, since Edna is a notoriously light sleeper.

Alex shuffles her keys, clutching the bag with the cupcake in it in her left hand as she eases her key into the lock and opens the door, flicking the lights on. She tosses her keys on the coffee table, then closes and locks her door behind her. She sets the cupcake bag on the coffee table too, then slips back to her bedroom to change into her pajamas – a pair of sleep shorts and an old tank – and then moves to the bathroom, where she washes her face of the dirt and grime of the day, pulling her hair down from the bandana and hair tie after she’s done.

Finally, she settles on the couch, tucking her legs up underneath her. She flicks on the television, turning it to something completely mindless, trying not to focus on the fact that she’s alone – her daughter away on a school trip, her family a half a world away, the man who most recently used to love her just _away._ She will not _cry_ on this lonely birthday. She will almost cry, the tears watering over the edges of her eyes, but she will not let them fall. She refuses.

Alex watches the TV for a bit, still staving off the tears, catching a few with her fingers – _still not technically crying, then_ – before she leans forward and pulls a candle lighter from the single drawer of her coffee table and lights the fragrant candle – vanilla scented – atop her coffee table. She stands up and dims the lights a touch before settling back down and pulling the bag with the cupcake closer to her.

Alex stares at the bag, trying to talk herself out of eating it – she’d had birthday flan at the restaurant, while the waiters and Arthur and Karen had practically screamed the happy birthday song over a rather loud and rather lovely mariachi band. She’d made a quick wish then, but regretted it – she never could figure out what she wanted on a moment’s notice; she was far too indecisive for all of that.

With a sigh, Alex stops the war within her and unrolls the bag, peering inside to see the unassuming single cupcake staring back at her, it’s red and white striped candle standing proudly.

She gingerly lifts it out of the bag, setting it on the coffee table and dropping the bag by her feet on the floor. She lights the candle, closes her eyes, and wishes – _just wishes_ – and then blows it out. She lifts the cupcake and removes the candle, licking the cream cheese frosting from it, tasting a bit of wax but not minding a bit because it tastes so very much like happy days, made all the more reverent by the smell of sulfur still lingering in the air. Smiling, she’s about to lean forward and take a bite of the cupcake when she hears a knock at her door – it’s quiet, tentative, unsure, and Alex furrows her brow in confusion before she makes her way to the door, peering through the small peephole.

Frowning, she transfers the candle to her pinky of the hand still holding the cupcake and pulls the door open.

Matt Smith is standing on her doorstep and her mouth hangs open a moment in surprise, the porch light illuminating his hair and for a moment she is struck by how very handsome he looks there on her doorstep. _Not the point, Alex_ , she reminds herself, looking at him expectantly, all the while trying to look cross instead of intrigued.

It’s not every day a young handsome man appears on her doorstep right after she’s made a rather cheeky birthday wish.

He wipes his hand over the back of his neck, looking suddenly nervous, “Uh, hi –” He starts, as if him showing up on her doorstep is the most casual thing in the world. “Sorry – I just…” he trails off, and his face changes and it becomes _so clear_ that he is second guessing his decision that Alex almost feels sorry for him.

Which is ridiculous – she should be frightened, or at least a little angry – and she’s sure somewhere deep down she is. Angry, that is. She doesn’t think she could ever be frightened of someone like Matt, all boyish good looks and oddly charming – at least not in the classic sense of the word ‘frightened,’ anyway. But the anger is hiding under something else decidedly flirtier.

She arches her brow at him, still holding her place in the doorway.

“I just – I know I didn’t make a good impression earlier today, and so I called Moff, and he gave me your address, and I realize how out of the blue and probably awkward this is, but –” He sighs, shuffling on his feet a bit as he looks at her, “I’ve admired your work for a long time – a _really_ long time – and I know I’m new to this in the grand scheme of things and a bit wet behind the ears, but I promise you – if you give me a chance, you won’t regret it. I –” He sighs, “Some days, tattooing feels like all I have – and I just… want to learn from the best.” He grins at her, “That’s you. Obviously.”

She can’t help herself – she smiles. God help her, she smiles, though she tries to bite it back, though she tries to hide it with her hand over her mouth, she smiles. “I’ll tell you what,” she says, finally, considering him, remembering how refreshing his portfolio was when she looked at it again, “Despite how inappropriate this,” she gestures to where he stands on her doorstep, “We’re having our bi-annual walk-in day this weekend. Saturday, to be precise.” She sighs, “It’s always a bit of a big deal because we do them so rarely and we don’t usually get through everyone who comes in the door. You come in with a few designs you’ve designed yourself – if enough people choose your design – and _don’t_ end up complaining about how poorly you tattoo, and you pass one final test after that – you’ve got an apprenticeship. With me.”

The grin spreads slowly across Matt’s face, and he looks so bloody happy that Alex rolls her eyes, “Really?” When she nods, his grin widens, “Thank you, Kingston!” He exclaims, rolling excitedly on the balls of his feet.

The nickname strikes her as odd – no one’s ever called her that before, usually sticking with variations of her first name, since there can be so many. But she finds she rather likes it from him – it feels familiar. It shouldn’t because she’s only just met him, but there’s something about him that makes her feel like she’s known him for longer than she has – a lifetime, maybe. It’s a level of comfort that is unexpected but pleasant, even if it leaves her feeling a bit off-kilter.

She smiles a bit exasperatedly, shifting her weight on her feet, “See to it that I don’t regret it,” she warns, narrowing her eyes a bit.

“You’ll never regret a thing about meeting me, I promise you,” he’s about to turn on his heels and walk away, when his eyes drop to her hands, and he turns his head curiously, “Why are you holding a candle?” He asks, “And a cupcake?”

Alex raises her eyebrows at him, watching the wheels turn in his head, and she sees the moment it clicks, “Kingston!” He gasps, “Is it – is today _your birthday_?”

She winces, turning around to glance at the clock behind her, “For another few hours, anyway.”

“Are you having a party?” He asks, suddenly concerned, “Did I interrupt?”

Alex laughs outright at that, her head tipping back, “No, darling, I’m not having a party.” She glances down at her attire – pajama shorts and a tank top, shaking her head, “Not as such, anyway. Just me and the cupcake, really.”

Matt’s eyes follow the path her own eyes just took, and she’s suddenly very conscious that she’s wearing a thin white ribbed tank that’s shrunk a bit in the wash and which is, she thinks, rather quite see-through. Matt’s eyes track back up her body and land on her eyes, and Alex is stunned to see a flash of desire flicker in his gaze.

She shakes her head – apparently turning 49 brings the onset of delusions of grandeur, because she absolutely _had_ to be reading him wrong. There is no way this man – _at least_ a decade and a half younger than her, possibly more – is looking at her with _desire_. It simply isn’t possible. It had to be a trick her age-addled brain is playing on her in the lowlight of her porch.

“ _Alone_?” He shakes his head, “On your _birthday_?”

Alex sighs, “What _is_ it with the bloody _young_ and their birthdays?” She lifts the cupcake to her mouth and licks a bit of the cream cheese frosting from it, “I’m _fine_ , Matt, honestly.”

Matt’s eyes do _not_ dart to her lips to watch her tongue gather the frosting left behind, that must be a trick of her porch light as well. Clearly.

“Are you at least watching a good film, Kingston?”

Alex drops her gaze to her cupcake, muttering, she knows, rather unintelligibly.

Matt leans forward, cupping his hand over his ear as though he’s straining to hear her, “What’s that?”

Alex huffs, “I _said_ I’m watching Real Housewives of whatever-the-hell County,” she narrows her gaze at him, daring him to laugh or say something.

Matt just shakes his head, then steps forward, pushing gently by her into her flat, “No,” he keeps shaking his head, “No, no, no, Kingston. This will not do.” He turns to look at her, and she knows she’s standing there gaping at him. “If you’re going to be alone on your birthday, you need to at least drown your sorrows with a proper _film_.”

Alex glares at him, “I never said anything about _sorrow_.”

Matt chuckles, “You didn’t have to, love.”

The intimacy of the endearment feels sudden, but surprisingly not unwelcome. She shouldn’t be indulging in this – whatever silly girlish and utterly ridiculous fantasy is starting to bloom in her too bloody hardened heart about this man – boy, really – but she can’t help it.

Because he’s right – there _is_ sorrow. Has been for a long time now, and it’s strange because she’s only just met him, but when she looks at him, when he smiles at her, she feels it lessen. Just a bit. Just enough.

Suddenly, Matt looks a bit panicked, as though he’s just realized that he has barged into the flat of a woman he doesn’t really know, and maybe he didn’t think things through. She wonders if that’s a recurring theme for him, impulsive behavior. Wonders if he is overly impulsive where she is overly cautious, and maybe what she recognizes in him is a counterpoint.

He scrapes his hand along his hair again – a nervous tick, Alex notices – and looks at her, where she still stands in the doorway, door held open, “If you really want to be alone – I’ll go. I just –” She waits, wondering what he’s going to say. He looks at her for a long moment, his eyes searching hers, and she feels her breath catch in her throat – like he can _see_ her, like maybe he’s the only one who ever has. “I don’t know anyone in the city, don’t have many friends, and – well, I’ve spent birthdays alone before. Not very fun.” He says, and Alex can tell that’s not exactly what he meant to say.

She stares at him, weighing her options. She can make him leave – he will go willingly, and she can sit and watch her _Housewives_ , eat her cupcake, fall asleep on the couch, and wake up with a crick in her neck that she probably wouldn’t have had at _48_. Or, she could let Matt stay – this strange man who seems to know so much about her, only some of which he could have read.

Sighing, she closes the door and locks it. “You can stay,” she points the business end of the candle at him, “But I’m _not_ sharing my cupcake.”

“Fair enough,” Matt says, still clad in his jeans and t-shirt from earlier in the day. He plops down on the couch, toeing his shoes off. She eyes him, but he doesn’t notice, picking up her remote and fiddling with it, pointing it at the TV and pressing buttons.

Alex glances down at herself, wondering if her tank top is too clingy or too see-through, but the lights in here are dim, and it’s literally the most comfortable thing she owns, so she shrugs, and then sits down on the couch next to him. She ensures she leaves an appropriate amount of distance between them, but her couch is rather small, more of loveseat, really, and she can feel the heat of his body emanating.

“Do you want something to drink?” Alex asks, finding herself suddenly nervous. She hasn’t been alone with a man she’s not been married to in a very long time, and she hasn’t had a man in her flat period since she moved in.

Matt presses the remote to the TV, “What’ve you got?”

Alex furrows her brow – she’s not sure. She spends most of her time at the shop these days, particularly when her daughter isn’t with her. She stands and makes her way over to the refrigerator, pulling it open. She looks, finding a rather sad state of affairs. “Uh,” she calls out, staring at her near-empty refrigerator as if something will manifest itself out of thin air, “Water – and…” She picks up a bottle of apple juice and looks at the date – _nope_ – she eyes the bottle in the back of the fridge, “Water and – well, champagne.”

Matt laughs from her living room, “I’m fine with either, honestly.”

Alex eyes the bottle of Veuve Clicquot she bought the day her divorce was finalized, nearly a year ago now. She’d been walking out of the courthouse and passed a liquor shop, and the thought had struck her – she celebrated marrying him, why should she not celebrate _divorcing_ him, too, especially when their marriage had turned so toxic at the end? She’d gone home, intending to drink it that night, but never got around to it, and then convinced herself she was saving it for a special occasion – never finding one quite special enough.

Shrugging, she pulls the bottle out of the refrigerator – not ideal for storing, but her flat didn’t come equipped with a wine storage cellar. She pops it open, retrieves two flutes from her cabinet, and pours the glasses, taking a long sip of hers before topping herself off.

She settles herself on the couch, tucking her legs up underneath herself as she hands a glass to Matt. He thanks her, turning to offer her a brief smile, but as he’s about to look back at the TV, he stops – staring at her, his gaze flicking down to her legs, before he clears his throat and turns back to the TV.

Alex feels a hot wave run through her body – _this must be what senility feels like_ , she thinks, because the young man on her couch was certainly not just checking her out. Again. That absolutely did not just happen.

She sips her champagne and clears her throat, “What are we watching, then?”

“None of that Housewives rubbish,” Matt says, sipping his champagne before setting it on her coffee table, “We’re in luck!” Matt exclaims excitedly, “There are at least _three_ John Hughes movies on demand here!” He presses a few more buttons.

“John Hughes?” Alex looks at him, amused.

“Yes!” Matt confirms, enthusiastically, “The quintessential American High School experience in film format – _fascinating_ anthropological study!” Alex laughs, and he turns to grin at her, “What do you say, Kingston? _Pretty in Pink_?”

Alex wrinkles her nose over her glass of champagne, “I’ve always been more of a _Breakfast Club_ kind of girl.”

Matt smiles, laughing, “Well, you’re in luck, birthday girl –” He presses a couple of buttons on her remote, and the film starts. He sets the remote on her coffee table and picks up his glass of champagne, leaning back into her couch.

The opening chords of the film starts, and Alex finds herself relaxing back into the couch, champagne on her tongue, music of the late 80s filling her flat.

She finds herself feeling comfortable, and it surprises her, but as she and Matt watch the film together, laughing at almost all the same bits, she finds herself surprisingly at ease. Halfway through the movie, she eats her cupcake, and she notices Matt watching her out of the corner of his eye, just before he shifts a bit on her couch, moving a bit farther away from her.

Matt gets up moments later and refills their flutes with the bottle of Veuve in the kitchen, then settles himself back down on the couch. She reaches her left hand out to grab the flute, her fingers brushing lightly over his – she feels a jolt run through her body and she freezes momentarily, watching him, wondering if he felt it too.

She can’t discern his features, but his eyes trail up and down her arm, taking in the tattoos that cover it.

“It’s beautiful work.” Matt says, and he breathes the words out a bit roughly as his eyes trace over every inch of her arm.

Alex smiles, “Thank you,” she takes a sip of her champagne, then leans her head back against the couch, her eyes on the television screen, “It tells a story.” she admits, quietly.

Matt’s eyes haven’t left her, she can still feel his gaze on her, “Does it?”

“Mm,” she nods, rolling her head to the side to look at him, “Collectively, anyway.”

Matt smiles at her, and Alex feels her stomach tighten, “I’d like to hear it sometime.”

Alex sighs, pushing her curls out of her face, “It’s been quite awhile since I told it.”

Matt nods, “That’s okay,” he smiles again, not looking away from her, “I’m patient.”

She arches her brow at him, “Are you?” She’s not sure why her voice sounds so breathy, but it does – and she’s not sure why her heart is thundering in her chest, but it _is_.

“Can be,” he says, and Alex hadn’t realized quite how close he was to her, but he is – very close.

Something passes between them, and she can hear the film in the background, but she can’t force herself to look away from Matt as he stares at her, his eyes wandering over her face. She swears she sees hunger on his face, and the thought makes her breath come a bit shallower, makes the hunger she feels for him deepen and intensify.

Alex isn’t sure who moves first, which of them closes the distance, but suddenly his mouth is on hers, his lips moving so gently over her own, and she’s kissing him back. Her hand moves up to his face, and her palm lays flat against his cheek, so warm under her hand as their lips move together – slowly, so, so slowly.

She doesn’t know how this happens either – whether he pulls her, or she moves of her own volition, but suddenly she’s straddling his lap, one knee on either side of him, and she’s kissing him still, her hair falling in a curtain around them. His hands are on her hips, his fingers gently stroking, and she opens her mouth to him, his tongue sweeping inside.

Alex’s breath catches as she tastes him – champagne and something else sweet, his tongue moving over hers at an excruciating, deliciously slow pace. His hands skate up her sides, and her breath hitches again as his hands gently bury themselves in her hair.

She can feel him, so hard beneath her, and she presses herself into him a bit, enjoying the sharp intake of air and the strangled “ _Alex_ ” that falls from his lips into her mouth.

But even as she rocks gently against him, his hardness digging into her heat, he still kisses her slowly; his lips move so slowly, so reverently, and his hands do not wander anywhere too fast – they comb through her hair, skate down her back, caress the bare skin of her thighs, and it drives Alex wild – but also makes her feel a bit weepy, because she hasn’t been kissed and touched like this in a very, very long time. Her last husband certainly hadn’t done it in years, and maybe he never had – not like this. Soft, and sweet – _lovingly_ \- Matt’s hands map the layout of her body.

Finally, music cuts through her lust-filled haze, and Alex pulls away from Matt, glancing over her shoulder to see Judd Nelson walking across the field with his fist raised high in triumph. A bit stunned, Alex moves herself from Matt’s lap, his hands on her waist steadying her until she’s finally back on her own section of the couch.

She tries desperately not to glance at his jeans– but she fails, smiling a bit when she sees that he’s still hard and honestly not trying to hide it from her at all.

He chuckles, running a hand through his hair as the credits roll, “I thought you weren’t sharing your cupcake?”

Alex eyes him, “I didn’t.”

Matt’s eyebrows shoot up, “Really? Because it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” He licks his lips, “Never mind. I guess that’s just you.”

Ales giggles – really, properly giggles – and she shakes her head, “You’re ridiculous.”

He smiles at her, his eyes bright and shining, watching her carefully. She bites her lip, trying to decide if she should ask him to stay – wondering if he would, and if he did, if she would regret it in the morning.

Matt, she thinks, can see the conflict on her face, and he reaches out, tucking a curl behind her ear, “Hey – it’s okay.” he whispers, his voice tender, “I’ll go – and I’ll see you Saturday,” he stands, adjusting his jeans, and Alex stands too, walking him to the door, “Prepare yourself to be _amazed_ by my designs.” He opens the door to her flat, and leans against it for a moment, his gaze sweeping over her face, his eyes still shining, “Happy birthday, Kingston,” he whispers, leaning in and pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek.

“Thanks,” she whispers back, surprised she is even able to find her voice.

Matt grins, then turns and walks away. She watches him get into his car, waving as he drives off, and then closes the door behind her, locking it. She presses her back up against it and brings a hand to her lips, her fingers running across her swollen flesh.

Alex feels thoroughly kissed, and that’s something else she hasn’t been in a very long while.

She sighs, dropping her head back against the door and pressing her eyes shut – _delusions of grandeur and senility, definitely_. Along with a temporary loss of sanity, clearly brought on by advanced age – those are the only things she can use to rationalize what had just happened here in her flat.

She’d let a handsome young man kiss her so sweetly and so tenderly here in her flat for well on an hour, and she’d only just met him.

She wants to berate herself, wants to yell at herself for being so stupid and so idiotic, but she can’t – it felt too damn good, she felt too damn cherished – and there’s plenty of time for the doubts to creep up with the sun.

So, instead, she pads to her bedroom, pulls back the top sheet and blankets, slides in and drifts off to sleep: the taste of champagne and Matt Smith both rich on her tongue.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s so good to have someone new!” Karen says, walking over to the kitchenette and breaking off a piece of blueberry muffin, “We haven’t had someone new in ages.”
> 
> “He’s not new yet.” Alex speaks from the corner, sighing as she sits up straight and takes her glasses off, folding them and placing them on her open sketchbook. She walks toward him, and Matt tries to pretend he doesn’t feel a fluttering in his chest as she approaches.

Saturday rolls around quickly and pleasantly, and Matt spends his entire week preparing for the walk-in day. He goes to a couple of auditions, but even while he waits in a queue with twenty other blokes who look vaguely like him if you squint, he sketches. He works on his drawings, shoring them up so they will be easy to apply as tattoos, but still enticing enough for people to choose the designs.

By the time the sun rises on Saturday, the day of the walk-in, Matt has a neat page filled with little designs he can tattoo perfectly, he’s sure of it. He showers, gets dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, pulls on his trusty boots, grabs his sketchbook and heads out the door, making his way once again to the Fairfax District, and once again, to Alex Kingston.

_Alex_. The thought of her brings a smile to Matt’s face even as he sits in bumper-to-bumper traffic – that night at her apartment had been unexpected and lovely. He hadn’t _made out_ with anyone like that in years, and the thought exhilarated him. The memory of her soft, warm mouth against his, her tongue slipping into his mouth, was a sweet one. He hadn’t talked to her since it happened, and he felt the nerves coil in his stomach at the thought of seeing her again.

Things like this didn’t happen to him – he never fell so quickly and swiftly, but from the very moment he saw her in her tattoo shop, he’d felt himself start to fall. And that night at her flat, he’d felt it again – it scared him, a bit, precisely because he wasn’t scared. It felt _right_ , somehow, every moment with her -and he didn’t know if she felt the same.

By the time he finally pulls into a spot in the Fairfax District, he feels a vague sense of panic – what if she’d changed her mind because he’d kissed her? He _thinks_ he’d kissed her first, anyway, she may well have kissed him, he’s not really clear on the whole chain of events except to say that he’s very, very thankful for them.

The door to the studio is propped open, and he makes his way up the steps, the nerves tightening in his stomach with each step he takes. The French doors are open too, and Matt says a silent _thanks_ remembering what happened the first time he met those doors.

When he steps into the room, he sees Karen, the girl who was here before, and some other guy with sandy blond hair and a prominent nose. Karen turns as Matt’s shoes squeak on the hardwood.

“Hey, new guy!” she shouts excitedly, then bounds over to where he stands and gives him a hug he hadn’t been expecting.

Matt smiles, “Hello,” he catches Alex out of the corner of his eye – she’s sat in the corner, a sketchbook open in front of her, glasses perched adorably on her nose, but she’s watching him curiously. He smiles at her, but she drops her gaze back down to the book, her pencil poised and ready to draw, though he notices she doesn’t actually move it along the paper. She bites her lip instead, chewing on it as she stares.

“Hi, Matt, is it?” The other man in the room says, stepping in front of Matt and holding out his hand, “I’m Arthur. Darvill.” He introduces himself, and Matt notices the English accent, “I’m an artist here,” he explains, eyeing his station over his shoulder.

“Oh, cool! Yeah, mate, good to meet you,” Matt enthuses, smiling widely.

“It’s so good to have someone new!” Karen says, walking over to the kitchenette and breaking off a piece of blueberry muffin, “We haven’t had someone new in _ages_.”

“He’s not new yet.” Alex speaks from the corner, sighing as she sits up straight and takes her glasses off, folding them and placing them on her open sketchbook. She walks toward him, and Matt tries to pretend he doesn’t feel a fluttering in his chest as she approaches.

Her hair is down, her curls a bit wild, and she looks beautiful as she makes her way across the shop, her hips swaying as she walks. She’s wearing a long flowing skirt today paired with another tank top and worn Chuck Taylors. When she reaches him, she stops, smiling a bit.

“Those your designs?” She asks, indicating her head towards the sketchbook in his hands. Matt nods, and she reaches her hand out – he places it in her hands, and tries not to think about her hands fisting in his hair as he kissed her only a few days prior.

Alex takes the book from him, her delicate hands opening the book and her eyes scanning briefly through the pages until she lands on the page he’d designed for today. Her eyes run along the page, pausing here and there to inspect images, her mouth curling up in a bit of a smile at a couple of them.

Suddenly, she closes the book and hands it back to him, “Okay,” she nods once, “These are good, not a shitty flash amongst them,” she hooks her thumb behind her, “Karen has you set up at the station next to Arthur. She’ll explain how our walk-ins work.”

Matt grins and nods, moving over to the station next to Arthur and setting his sketchbook down, opening it to the page of designs. Karen follows him, sitting on the little rolling stool while he surveys the counter and supplies and begins to unpack his machines and own supplies.

“So, basically, it’s first come, first served – everyone wants Alex first, so the first ten or twelve people who get here are for her.” Karen laughs a bit, “One year there was nearly a fist fight over it,” she shakes her head, “After that, it’s still first come, first served – and the clients can choose from any one of the designs you and Arthur have made.” Karen eyes his sketchbook, “I should actually make some copies of these to pass out to the people waiting.” At his nod, Karen picks up his book, giving him a bright smile and heading towards the back room of the shop.

When she’s gone, Alex approaches him and he can see the apprehension on her face, “Can we – can we talk?” She wrings her hands together in front of her.

Matt nods, “Sure.”

She pulls him towards the little room that stands between the studio and the bathroom and pulls the little sliding door shut. She looks apprehensive, still, backlit by the window behind the only couch in the room.

“Do you want to… sit?” Alex asks, looking behind her at the small brown couch in the room. Next to it is a bicycle, leaning up against an old rickety bookcase.

Matt grins at her, “Just dying to get me on another couch, eh Kingston?”

Alex’s eyes widen at that and her face falls; he’d been teasing, of course, _flirting_ as was his way, but he rushes to correct himself nonetheless.

“I was _kidding_ , Kingston.” He looks at her curiously, wondering precisely what’s going on in her head, though he thinks he has some idea – perhaps she wasn’t as thankful for the chain of events on her birthday as he was, “Sure, I’ll sit.”

He sits down on the faux leather couch, and she sits next to him, pressing herself up against the arm farthest away from him and he feels his stomach jump in dread at the look on her face. Oh. So, it’s going to be _that_ kind of chat.

Alex tucks a curl behind her ear, then drops her hand to play with a tiny rip in the cushion, the fingernail of her index finger scratching lightly against it.

She looks down at the couch, watching her finger play with the material, “Look, Matt, I don’t know what that was the other night, okay? It was – it was a nice kiss, but I was – we shouldn’t have.” She breaks off, takes a breath, and tries again, looking at him this time, “You were right. I was sad that night – and you… were there,” Matt knows he looks crestfallen, can feel his face contort with it, and she sighs, “Shit. I didn’t mean that – I just meant – you made me feel better, you know. _Less sad_. I just don’t want you to think I thought anything – or that I expected well, anything, really.”

Matt feels awful – he had really enjoyed kissing her, had really enjoyed the weight of her body against his, but he _likes_ her, and he can see this is hard for her.

“Kingston,” he says his nickname for her quietly, and he knows he sounds sad, but he can’t help it, “I get it. It was a lovely kiss,” If _kiss_ is exactly what one would call an extended make out session that left him thinking about her for nights on end, “– but that’s all it has to be if that’s how you want it.”

Alex looks at him, her mouth dropping open in surprise. She tucks the same curl behind her ear again, “Oh – okay, good. That’s – that’s good.” She smiles at him, her eyes bright, then stands up and brushes her jeans off, “Good luck today, Matt,” she says, smiling at him again before she pulls the sliding door open and heads back into the studio.

Matt sits there for a moment, staring at the little bookshelf to his left. On it sits art books and books about tattooing, and a framed photograph of Alex and Moffat, their smiling faces looking back at him. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair – he didn’t know what he’d been expecting, honestly, but he suddenly knew exactly what he’d _hoped_.

He’d known it was a long shot, course he had, but he was astoundingly attracted to Alex Kingston, and he realized now he’d been hoping all week that she _wouldn’t_ regret what happened between them – he’d been hoping that she’d enjoyed it as much as he had.

With a sigh, he stands from the couch and heads back into the studio, setting up his makeshift station, determined not to let the sudden sadness he feels cloud this moment – he gets to _tattoo_. And he gets to tattoo in Alex Kingston’s shop for the opportunity to become her apprentice. Even if everything else went wrong in his life and this went right – he would be happy.

Matt tries not to look at her as she sits at her station, hunched over her sketchbook, her curls falling like a halo around her face. He feels the nerves in his stomach tighten again as people begin to show up, one by one in the small space.

It’s all very organized actually, and it’s exactly as Karen said, Alex’s roster fills up very quickly, with the first eleven people not even looking at Matt or Arthur’s portfolio or designs. Matt watches as Alex’s clients look excited and relieved that they’d managed to book a tattoo – however small – with such a renowned artist.

Matt notices some people looking at his design sheet and portfolio and he feels a little wave of anticipation in his stomach – it’s entirely possible that not a single person will sign up to be tattooed by him; he’d have to leave the shop with his tail tucked between his legs – and he’d likely never see Alex again, which somehow felt a fate worse than the first.

Arthur’s list is nearly full, but not quite, when Matt notices someone signing up at the top of his list – his very first client in LA. He tries to calm the excitement – he’s known for being exuberant at the best of times, but he still finds himself grinning like a fool. It’s a grin that only grows as he watches person after person sign up on his sheet until his list is full, too.

He can’t wipe the grin off his face as he’s unpackaging clean needles. When he glances up, he sees Alex watching him, a small smile threatening to break across her own face. She quickly ducks her head back down, focusing on her supplies, but he can still see her biting her lip as she tries not to smile.

_Oh_ , he thinks, _she likes him_.

Smiling to himself, he gets his first client ready to be tattooed. Soon, the only sounds that fill the shop are the buzzing of needles and the hushed murmurs of excited clients waiting their turn. Matt likes to work in quiet, so he doesn’t mind that no music emanates from the radio today. The hours pass quickly as he etches his designs into skin, and he’s happy that every single one of his clients leaves pleased with his work, smiling in the mirror and snapping a picture with their cell phone.

When the day is done, and all the clients are gone, Matt begins cleaning his station, putting inks away, tossing liners, feeling very pleased with himself. He’s about to pack his tattoo machines away when he hears Alex’s voice behind him.

“Actually,” she says, and _god_ , that throaty tone that’s just natural for her moves right through his body, “You’ve got one more client.” He stops, mid-pack, and looks over his shoulder at her.

“I’m sorry?”

Alex smiles at him, “You’ve one more client.” She repeats.

Matt sits up, whipping his head around, finding an empty studio save for Karen and Arthur. Karen is sitting on top of a little ledge on the wall, and Arthur is leaned back in his chair – they’re both watching him, amusement on their faces.

“Oh,” Matt puts his tattoo guns back on the work station, “I thought everyone had gone.”

Alex grins at him, then sits down in the chair next to his stool and he gapes at her, feeling the shock settle on to his face.

“Are you saying…?” His eyes are wide.

She holds her arm out to him – “You’ve. One. More. Client.” She enunciates each of the words as though he’s daft – and maybe he is a bit.

“You?” He asks, incredulously, “You want _me_ to tattoo _you_?” His heart is thundering in his chest at the prospect, but he’s sure despite her clarity that he must have missed something, misunderstood or heard her wrong. Surely she’s not asking for _him_ to tattoo her – that cannot be right. Matt glances up at Arthur and Karen, both of whom appear to be laughing at him, before he looks at Alex again.

Alex nods, and speaks to him slowly, “It’s the final test I mentioned – everyone who’s ever worked in my shop has tattooed me. My name’s on the door – how can I release you on the general public if I don’t know what it feels like to be tattooed by you?” She glances up at Darvill, “Arthur did this one,” she points to a lovely colorful swallow on the back of her forearm and Arthur smiles at her from across the room.

“But,” Matt’s eyes sweep over her arm, the majority of which is covered in bright, beautiful ink, “Is there room?”

She looks at him and laughs, that brilliant throaty laugh that feels like it crawls under his skin in the best possible way when he hears it, “There’s room. Make it fit, Matt – that’s part of the test.”

Matt eyes her, his eyes scanning her face, trying to discern whether or not she’s actually fucking with him. Finally, he grasps her slender hand in his, her palm warm and small. He twists her arm a bit, his eyes grazing over her skin, looking at the minimal blank space that’s left. He scarcely resists the urge to run his fingertips over her flesh, to trace the lines other people have made permanently on her skin.

“What do you want?” His voice is suddenly husky, and he blinks, wondering why that had happened, but already knowing the answer as her fingers wiggle a bit in his hand.

“Up to you.” she says, “But nothing from your sheet from today.”

Matt smiles, his eyes still on her skin, “Got it.” He reaches into his bag for a red sharpie, turning her arm so it’s facing up. He sees the tender pale skin of the underside of her forearm and smiles, finally looking up at her.

“Do you trust me?” He asks, suddenly brazen – suddenly not wanting her to see his design until he’s actually tattooed it on her skin.

Alex bites back a smile, “I’ve just met you.”

He poises the sharpie over a bare part of her skin, “But do you trust me?”

She bites her lip, watching him. Her eyes flick down to the sharpie he’s holding before she looks him in the eye and sighs.

She rolls her eyes, “Go on, then.”

Alex looks away, turning her head and looking out the window. Matt grins and begins work, the red sharpie moving over her flesh. He draws what he wants, twisting her arm a bit to see it from different angles. He grabs a black sharpie and reinforces some of the lines, providing himself directions for when he picks up the needle.

“Don’t look,” Matt instructs, “This is where the trust comes in,” he turns away to ready his needles, inks, and machine. He glances over his shoulder to find Alex still looking towards the window, a small smile playing on her face.

He grins, grabbing his tattoo machine and sitting back on the stool, rolling his supplies where he needs them to be. He gloves his hands, then looks at her – struck by the sight of even just the side of her face, her curls tucked behind her ear.

The machine in his hand buzzes, and he dips it in ink, “Ready?”

Alex laughs, “Always.”

Matt smiles, bringing the needle of the tattoo gun to her skin. He waits, as is his custom, but she doesn’t even move or flinch as the needle touches her skin. Matt finds the idea a strange turn on, and he quickly tries to shake that idea from his brain as he brings the needle to her skin again.

When he’s hunched over her skin, his head blocking the design from her view, she turns to look at him, smiling.

“You’ve got a soft touch, darling.”

Matt pauses tattooing, looking up and smiling at her, “Thanks, Kingston.”

He’s about to look back down, but he glances over Alex’s shoulder and sees Arthur staring at them, the look on his face intense. Matt looks at Karen, who shifts uncomfortably on the ledge she’s sitting on, eyes darting nervously between Arthur and where Matt and Alex are sitting.

Matt furrows his brow – he recognizes that look, the one Arthur is still giving him, and Matt’s eyes flick back to Alex, who is now turned to the window again, staring obliviously at the setting sun.

Filing the information away for later, Matt works carefully on Alex’s skin, dipping his ink in color, filling the design in. He’s nearly done when he hears Alex giggle – and _oh_ he didn’t know anything could sound so downright adorable.

“What?” He asks, laughing as he pauses again to look up at her.

“You tattoo with your tongue out when you’re concentrating.”

“I do not!” Matt protests, but he’s grinning.

“Oh, but you do, darling.” She smirks at him, “Don’t worry, it’s very cute.”

“Oi! I’ll have you know my tongue is not _cute_ \- I’ve a very manly tongue!”

Alex’s eyebrow crawls up her forehead and she smirks at him again, “Is that right?” When he can only nod, feeling the flush settle on his cheeks, she laughs, “Well, perhaps you’ll have to show me someday.”

Matt chokes, making a strangled sound in the back of his throat because he’d actually _quite_ like to show Alex Kingston just how manly his tongue can be.

She laughs again, “Careful, darling, you’ve got a needle very close to my skin.”

Matt glares at her, “Then stop distracting me, Kingston,” he lowers his voice, determined to flirt back, “Or I’ll give you a proper tongue lashing.”

Alex snorts, “Promises, promises,” she sing-songs as she turns her head towards the window once again.

Matt grins but can’t help glancing quickly over Alex’s shoulder at Darvill, curious. Just as he expected, Arthur is staring, completely still, with an odd look of anger and something else on his face that Matt immediately reads as jealousy. _Darvill is jealous_.

Matt finishes the tattoo quickly, wiping it with antiseptic. “Alright, Kingston,” Matt says, wiping the tattoo down again, “Have a look.”

He sets his tattoo gun on the tray and watches as Alex turns to look, taking in the pinks and purples, with a little bit of teal for accent. She lifts her arm up, getting a better look. Matt watches as an amused grin spreads across her face.

“Is that a – a _fez_?” She asks, amusement in her voice.

Matt nods, “It is.”

She arches her brow at him, and he feels his stomach tighten, worried for the first time that she won’t like it.

“Why?”

Matt shrugs, “Fezzes are cool.”

Alex looks at him, staring at him as she bites her lip. Finally, after a long moment, she smiles, “So they are, darling. So they are.”

Matt reaches for a bandage, “Would you like some care instructions for your new tattoo?” He smoothes the clear bandage over her tattoo, taping it on the sides and around her arm.

Alex snorts, “Oh, shut up.” She stands, walking over to her station and picking up her bag. Packing it up, she hums, and Matt stares at her, on edge.

_What does it mean_? _Does she like the fez_? _Has he earned a spot here_? All the questions race through his mind, but he doesn’t dare ask any of them. Just watches as she fishes her keys from the bottom of her bag and then walks across the studio towards the door.

She opens it, and Matt feels dumbfounded. She’s just about to close it behind her when she pops her head back in, “Oh, Matt?” He looks at her, “See you tomorrow.” She grins at him.

Matt can’t help it – he _flails_. He doesn’t mean to, he means to be a bit cooler about the whole thing, but he’s _excited_ , and he’s never been the best at controlling his limbs even when he’s perfectly calm – curse of his particular type of lanky, he imagines. Karen shrieks and runs across the room, throwing her arms around him in a hug that feels a bit weird since they’ve really just met – but she seems nice, and Matt thinks she’s probably just that sort of person.

“Congratulations!” Karen says, pulling back, “Welcome to the shop!”

Matt smiles at her, “Thanks,” he looks back at Alex, and notices that her grin seems a bit dimmer than it had just moments ago, though it’s still on her face. “Thanks, Kingston.” He smiles at her, “You won’t regret it.”

She winks at him, but her voice is a bit curt when she speaks, “See that I don’t.”

Matt stares at the closed door curiously, wondering about the look he’d just seen on Alex’s face. He turns to look at Arthur, who is still regarding him with a heavy gaze, and Matt wonders a bit what he’d just walked into here at this shop.

Whatever it is, Matt thinks as he packs up his tattoo machines, he’s very glad to be here.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Someday you’re going to learn how to enter a room properly, darling,” Alex says, the pet name rolling off her tongue a bit too easily these days. She should stop – but she likes the way it sounds, likes the way it makes her think of him. Still, she really should stop.
> 
> Matt grins at her, “No fun that way,” He steps near her and she tries not to inhale the fresh clean scent of him. “This one’s for you.” He holds out the coffee cup in his right hand.

Alex realizes she has a problem nearly straight away. Her problem is Matt. Or, rather, the _feelings_ she finds herself developing for Matt. She’d thought she could write whatever current she felt between them on her birthday off as a one-off. As a lonely make out session and nothing more.

He is an attractive man – and hell, she wasn’t going to object to making out with a _young_ man who happened to find her attractive enough to kiss. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with kissing – even _sensual_ kissing like had happened on her birthday.

But she very soon realizes – the next time she sees him, in fact – that she’s in trouble. And she realizes this because she feels _nervous_ just looking at him, and her heart does this strange stuttering in her chest that she swears it hasn’t done since she was a _bloody_ schoolgirl. Even before she officially hires him as her apprentice, she spends half her days chastising herself, telling herself not to think about Matt that way. _After_ she hires him, after she sees that stupid grin on his face, it’s a hundred times worse.

It seems like the majority of her time is spent either thinking about him or berating herself for thinking about him – she feels ridiculous, of course. She feels like the biggest idiot on the planet, because a _kiss_ surely doesn’t mean anything. Surely it doesn’t mean he would be interested in her – why would he be? She’s old enough to be – well. Old enough. And he? Isn’t.

Alex groans – she’d come in early this morning to try and work quietly on some drawings, enjoying the natural light her studio provides. But she can’t get anything done – she can’t think of anything but Matt and she _does not_ keep looking at the clock wondering why time suddenly started moving so slowly when he’s supposed to be here at ten.

The minutes tick by and Alex scratches her pencil against the paper but she doesn’t really draw anything – instead, she thinks about the way Matt’s lips felt against hers on her birthday. She thinks about the way his hands wandered, but never too much – thinks about them buried in her hair, gripping her hips. How she brushed up against him to find him hard against her – his little intake of breath when she did.

She thinks about how when she saw him next she apologized, nearly claiming a temporary leave of her senses on her 49th birthday. He understood – he was very gracious. Alex snorts – _more like relieved_. Must have been scary for a moment for a young man like Matt to have to imagine that he’s going to have to suddenly let a middle-aged woman with a crush down gently.

Still, sometimes Alex thinks she saw a bit of sadness in his eyes when she’d told him - well, whatever she’d told him. Whatever lie she’d thought of in the moment, but she _must_ be misremembering. There’s no way Matt – _29,_ she’d found out through Karen – would be _sad_ about something like that.

But the way he looked at her on that couch – sometimes, she wondered. And then he’d gone and tattooed a lovely _fez_ on her arm, so close to the pulse point on her wrist. It fit in beautifully with the rest of her sleeve, bright and beautiful, the color theory on the tattoo itself lovely and unexpected. _Curse_ her stupid tests and rules, because now every time she looks at that fez, which is quite frequently if she’s being honest, she thinks of Matt. And the cycle starts all over again.

The tattoo is healed and Matt has been apprenticing for her for nearly a month now, and Alex has to admit he’s quite good. He’d apprenticed under Moffat for a little over a year, so she shouldn’t have been surprised – but she was, a bit. She hasn’t had many apprentices, actually – Arthur a couple years back, and one very sensitive girl who’d moved to the Midwest somewhere and opened her own shop even before that.

But she’s been pleasantly surprised by Matt. He’s a good tattoo artist, but he’s also got a good work ethic, and an intense enthusiasm for learning. He hangs on her every word, and she must admit it’s a bit good for her ego. And he makes her _laugh_. He’s quite funny, in a charming sort of way – and he can _flirt_.

Alex has a reputation as a bit of a flirt. She always has – most people just laugh and shake their heads, but it’s the rare person that will flirt back. Matt not only flirts back, he flirts back with vigor – and frequently, he’s the one initiating the flirting in the first place. It would all be very fun and good for her self-esteem, but she finds herself enjoying the flirting a little _too much_. Hoping for a racy comment a little too hard – and she _knows_ it has to do with these feelings she’s developed for him. These stupid, stupid feelings.

That can only ever be unrequited on her side.

Alex sighs, looking at the clock, watching the last few minutes pass. She thinks about Matt – about something he said that day she told him to just forget the kiss. He’d said _that’s all it has to be if that’s how you want it_ , and something about that has been bothering her since he said it, chewing at her gut.

When Matt stumbles through the door at ten on the dot, she thinks she should finally ask him. They’re rarely alone together, which is probably a good thing, given how she’s started feeling about him, given the way she’s been fantasizing about him, honestly - but she hasn’t had a chance to ask him properly.

Alex giggles as she watches Matt trip, the two coffees he’s holding miraculously not flying out of his hands, though a bit of the slightly melted whipped topping does slosh over the edge and onto the lids.

“Someday you’re going to learn how to enter a room properly, darling,” Alex says, the pet name rolling off her tongue a bit too easily these days. She should stop – but she likes the way it sounds, likes the way it makes her think of him. Still, she really _should_ stop.

Matt grins at her, “No fun that way,” He steps near her and she tries not to inhale the fresh clean scent of _him_. “This one’s for you.” He holds out the coffee cup in his right hand.

Alex smiles at him, taking the proffered coffee – it’s one of the sweet ones she loves from the shop across the way, “Darling,” she’ll stop tomorrow, “Thank you. But you really _should_ stop bringing me these. They go straight to my hips, I’m afraid.”

Matt sits down in the chair at her station, “That’s fine by me,” Matt’s eyes slide down her body, “See, I quite like your hips, Kingston.” He gives her a cheeky grin, and Alex feels herself flush.

She’s not one to flush easily, if she’s honest, but there’s just something about _Matt._ She spends half her time around him talking her skin down from the ledge.

Alex smiles and shakes her head, while Matt grins around his straw. A silence falls over them and it feels companionable as they both partake in their daily routine, the light scratching of pencils against drawing paper the only sound that can be heard in the studio.

Alex stops drawing, tapping the eraser of her pencil against her bottom lip as she watches Matt. His hair falls a bit in his eyes, his tongue pokes out a bit at the corner, and his brow has a tiny line in the middle as he concentrates. The feeling that she’s never seen anything so bloody adorable washes over her and she feels the words tumbling out of her mouth before she can even make a conscious decision to say them.

“What did you mean?”

Matt stops drawing, looking up at her – his brow relaxes, “When?”

Alex presses her eyes shut – of _course_ he doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about. _He can’t read your mind, Alex_ , she smirks, _and thank god for that, hey_?

She thinks about lying – searching her brain for anything that could possibly make sense in the context. Finding nothing, she’s about to tell him _nothing_ , to forget it, but that’s not what comes out of her mouth: “A few weeks ago.” She sighs, _well, damn_ , “When you said – that the kiss,” she chokes the word out and glances down, “When you said that’s all it had to be if that’s how I wanted it.”

Matt taps the eraser of his pencil against his drawing pad, “Just what I said.”

Alex feels the disappointment flow through her. She had been hoping… well, she didn’t know precisely what she’d been hoping, “Right, okay.” She nods, feeling a bit embarrassed for even bringing it up again in the first place. She has to let it go now, “But _what_ did you _mean_?” Her traitorous mouth working in concert with her heart and no doubt her body which remembers his touch a little too well and a little to easily betrays her again.

Matt smiles, amused, “I meant that – it seemed like you wanted to just leave it there, Alex,” he shrugs, “So I said we could do that.”

Alex nods, chewing on her pencil a bit, “Right, okay.” She nods again, “But okay – then does that mean that…” She trails off, unsure where to start, unsure if she _should_ start. Luckily for her, her mouth decides for her again, “Does that mean that _you didn’t_ want to leave it there?”

Matt eyes her, and she sees something flash behind his eyes, but it’s gone so soon she can’t figure out exactly what it was, “Course I didn’t.”

Alex’s mouth drops open in surprise as her brain tries to process his words, “So, what?” She asks, incredulity coating her tone, “You wanted to what? Fuck?”

Matt’s eyes widen, “Christ, _no_ , Alex!” At her look, Matt rushes on, “Well, I mean – not _no_ like that, of _course_ I would – who _wouldn’t_ , but – ” He drops his forehead into his open palm, his skin turning a brilliant shade of red, “I’m not explaining myself very well here. Let me try again.” He takes a deep breath, “You are _bloody_ gorgeous – and I think you know very well that I had a reaction to kissing you that night. That being said – I don’t just want in your bed, Alex.”

Alex looks at him, the disbelief washing over her, “What else could you possibly want from me, Matt?”

He smiles at her, then reaches his pencil out and taps her on the nose with the eraser, “A date.”

She smiles despite herself, her nose wrinkling up a bit as she laughs. She raises her eyebrows, “A date?”

Matt nods, “A date.” he confirms, nodding, “You and me – one date.”

Alex looks at him suspiciously, “Matt, you _can’t_ be serious.” He simply stares at her and she rolls her eyes, “I’m old enough to be–”

“The most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen? Why, yes, Kingston, you are. Just my type? Abso-bloody-lutely.”

Her brows climb higher at that, “Your _type_? What? You have a thing for older women?”

Matt taps his pencil on his chin, “As a category? No. As it happens to pertain to you in this instance? _Yes_.”

“I’m your _boss_.”

“I’m not American – I won’t sue.”

Alex can feel her heart fluttering, her stomach doing little somersaults, and she feels herself on the verge of saying yes when she knows she should absolutely say no. Her mouth doesn’t listen, par for the course of the day, apparently.

“One date,” she finds herself agreeing.

Matt grins – “Great. Tonight. After your last client.”

She smirks at him, “Aren’t you eager?”

“Yes. And trying to make it happen before you change your mind.”

Alex looks at him, considering – his eyes are alight with mischief and she can’t help but smile back at him, “Fine,” she says, standing up and making her way to the back room. She peers around the corner and finds Matt grinning like an idiot.

 _Problem_ might be an understatement.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They have really hot salsa here,” she says, picking up her own chip, loading it with salsa, and taking a bite. “Forgot to mention, poor darling.”
> 
> “I like hot things,” Matt says, a bit defensively, but he’s grinning, “I just wasn’t prepared.”
> 
> Alex quirks her eyebrow at him, “Oh, so one should always prepare you for hotness before the fact, is that it?”
> 
> He laughs, his head tilting back and she is struck by how long and lovely his neck is, “Sometimes it’s pretty easy to tell how hot something will be just by looking at it.” He dips a chip into the salsa, but he’s looking directly at her.

The day passes quickly with Alex working on the finishing touches on a back piece for a young client who promptly pays her and then just as promptly asks her out. She sees Matt and Arthur watching her as she politely declines – the guy asks once more, trying to convince her, but she just shakes her head with a faint smile on her lips.

As she cleans up her station – which, really, is Karen’s job, but Alex has a particular _way_ she likes everything put away that Karen can’t seem to get quite right – Matt meanders over to her station, helping her put bottles of ink away since he knows her system quite well by now.

“That was your last client, yeah?”

Alex bites her lip and nods, “Yes, I’m done for the day.”

Matt grins – “Dinner?” He looks at the door her client has just closed behind him, “Unless you’re taking him up on his offer after all?”

She glares at him, “Oh shut up.”

She slides on her light jacket and clicks off the light above her workstation, tugging her curls out of the jacket. She slings her bag over her shoulder and turns to look at him where he is watching her expectantly, sighing a bit as she rolls her eyes, a smile threatening to tug at the corners of her lips.

Alex walks halfway across the studio and, not hearing Matt’s footsteps behind her, laughs, “Come on, then,” she pushes the door open and calls a quick goodnight over her shoulder to Arthur, failing to see how his eyes darken as he watches she and Matt leave together.

When they’re outside the shop, Alex turns to look at Matt, her hand on her hip, “So, where are we going?”

Matt flushes, “The place across the street?” He looks across the street at Alex’s favorite Mexican restaurant and shrugs nervously, “It’s not fancy, I know, I just – I want to get to know you and I thought it would be comfortable there?” He finishes, a bit sheepishly. “Is that okay?”

Alex looks at him then smiles because honestly, _it’s perfect_. She’d never been one for fancy dinners out on the town – this one or any other – and she’d be so much more comfortable at the little restaurant across the street than she would in the fanciest restaurant in LA.

“It’s more than okay. It’s lovely.” She crosses the street, tugging him by the arm so he follows her.

When they’re seated, margaritas in front of them, chips and salsa spread out on the table, she studies him from across the table. In the dim light of the restaurant, he looks attractive in an altogether unusual way. He’s got a long face and sparse eyebrows, but there’s something about his strange look that works for him. He’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, the material stretched out enticingly across his chest.

Alex notices people looking at them – surreptitious glances darting her way and she wonders if it’s all in her head. It may very well be, but it still leaves her wondering what in the bloody hell she’s doing on a date with someone so young. Gorgeous, but young.

Matt tucks in to the chips and salsa, and Alex watches as he brings one to his mouth, biting into it. His face goes a bit red and he sputters – grabbing for his margarita and taking a hefty swig.

Alex giggles and he glares playfully at her, “They have _really_ hot salsa here,” she says, picking up her own chip, loading it with salsa, and taking a bite. “Forgot to mention, poor darling.”

“I like _hot_ things,” Matt says, a bit defensively, but he’s grinning, “I just wasn’t _prepared_.”

Alex quirks her eyebrow at him, “Oh, so one should always _prepare_ you for hotness before the fact, is that it?”

He laughs, his head tilting back and she is struck by how long and lovely his neck is, “Sometimes it’s pretty easy to tell how _hot_ something will be just by looking at it.” He dips a chip into the salsa, but he’s looking directly at her.

She feels herself flush, feels a heat creep over her body and she tells herself it’s just the spice from the salsa, but even as she says it, she knows it’s a lie.

Clearing her throat, she leans back in her chair and looks at him, refusing to meet his innuendo with another one – it’s already too hot in this restaurant tonight as far as she’s concerned, “So. Why LA?”

Even in the dim light of the restaurant, Alex can see his sheepish expression, his reluctance to tell her, “Acting.”

Alex shakes her head, bringing her hand up to her forehead, “Oh, god, an _actor_. I’ve sworn off actors –” she picks up her margarita, eyeing him over the top of the large glass, “My first husband was – well, still _is_ – one, you know.”

“I do know.” Matt nods once, “And one of the dumbest men alive, apparently, since you’re currently on a date with me.”

She shakes her head, setting her margarita glass down; she ignores his flirt, but smiles, “Why acting?”

Matt shifts a bit in his chair, scratching at his cheek, and she wonders if it’s another of his nervous habits, “I – well, when I was a teenager, I found out - I couldn’t do what I wanted to do all my life.” He shrugs, “Play football. I, uh – hurt me back and learned I had a back condition, so. There went my dream.” He smiles a bit, “Acting kind of gave me some of that back, I guess. Let me really step into a life of someone else’s dreams – if that makes sense. Until it became a different dream of my own, I suppose.”

Alex feels an unexpected swelling in her chest for him – he is so very young, but he’d already had dreams ripped away from him without his consent. It’s a feeling she is very familiar with.

“I’m sorry,” she speaks quietly, watching him. He smiles at her, but she can see the ghost of sadness still lingering on his face, “Why tattooing?”

His eyes brighten and he reaches for his margarita glass, toying with the rim, “Body modification.” He shrugs, “When I got hurt I learned my body had turned against me, in a way, and I thought – I became a bit fascinated with body modification after that. With people turning their bodies into something else entirely, like canvases. I wanted to – help people do that, I guess?” He smiles self-consciously at her, his finger still playing with the rim of his glass, salt sprinkling into the glass and on the table below, “Is any of this making sense at all?”

Alex clears her throat, feeling the familiar yearning of her heart. She knows all too well about bodies rebelling – “It makes _perfect_ sense.” She nods, “So what’s the _real_ reason you don’t have any tattoos?”

Matt laughs then draws his finger away from his margarita glass, slipping his fingertip into his mouth to suck off the salt that had gathered there. Alex feels her mouth go suddenly very dry.

Withdrawing his finger, he smiles, “It’s – well, it’s a very personal type thing, isn’t it? Tattooing. And the _first_ tattoo,” he pulls a face and then sighs, “It’s… it’s so much trust, and it won’t just be the tattoo I carry with me, will it? It’ll be the person who gives it to me too, right? I’ll carry both of them around with me forever, this type of _reminder_ and so I’ve got to be sure. I have enough regrets about my body already.” He looks at her, “I won’t put my body in just anyone’s hands, you know.”

Alex feels the weight of his words, understands them immediately because she doesn’t give her trust easily anymore either, but she latches on to the safe thing here – the innuendo: “Oh no?” She lets her gaze slide down over his torso, “More’s the pity.”

Matt makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat, but recovers quite nicely, his eyes skating over her body the same way her eyes had done his, “Well, I might be willing to make an exception for the right hands…” At her smirk, he laughs, “What about you, then?”

Alex sighs before a slightly devious smile pulls at her lips, “Me?” She asks, “About the only hands I put my body in these days is my own.”

Matt splutters, rushing words out of his mouth as a look of panic clouds his face, “I didn’t mean – I wasn’t… that’s not what I…”

She laughs lightly, “Relax, darling. I’m _teasing_.” She arches a brow at him as a relieved expression flits across his features, “Why don’t you tell me what you _don’t_ know about me, and we’ll go from there.”

He flushes a bit, but smiles at her, “Pretend I don’t know anything – tell me everything. What do you want me to know?”

Alex regards him carefully, picking up her margarita and taking a drink before she sets it down, fixing him with a stare, “I have a pre-teen daughter. I’m divorced. _Twice_. Because I like to make the same mistakes twice, just in case.”

“Same man?”

“ _Different_ man. Nearly the same god-complex though.” She pauses, pretending to think, “Let’s see, I just turned 49. That’s one year away from half a century, in case you were wondering.”

Matt just grins at her, “If you’re trying to scare me off, it isn’t working.”

She eyes him, her eyes darting over his face as a familiar sensation that still somehow feels foreign pulls at her stomach, “You’ve got time yet.”

He just shakes his head, reaching for a chip, “You’re welcome to keep trying, Kingston, but I just don’t see that happening.”

Alex considers drawing the ace down her sleeve – the one that says _I could never give you a family_ , but thinks better of it; it’s not that kind of night. She laughs instead as she feels her curls move against her shoulders.

As dinner passes, she finds herself growing fonder of Matt – he’s _funny_. He makes her laugh in a way she hasn’t in years, in a way she hasn’t in so long she’d begun to wonder if she even could anymore. They chat easily, like they’ve known each other for years, and though the margarita does its work to warm her blood, by the time they’re standing in front of the restaurant after two hours of conversation, Alex knows that the warmth in her veins has more to do with Matt than any tequila she might have consumed this evening.

Matt’s eyes scan the block, his eyes reflecting the streetlamps at the edge of the curb, “Where’s your car?”

Alex puts her hands in her pockets, shrugging, “I walked.”

Matt’s jaw opens, “You _walked_?”

She laughs at his incredulous expression – apparently he is adjusting to LA quite well, “I know. It’s practically blasphemy in Los Angeles.” She shrugs, “I went to yoga this morning and then walked. I had to sort my thoughts out.”

“Something on your mind?”

Alex folds her arms over her chest because, _yes_ , “Maybe a bit.” _Him_. He’s been on her mind since the moment he tripped into her shop and no matter how much yoga she does, no matter how much walking she does, she can’t get him off of it.

He doesn’t reply, just looks at her, “Let me drive you.” Clearly reading her expression, he waves his hands out in front of him, “No funny business.” She bites her lip, and his eyebrows shoot up, “Unless you _want_ some funny business.”

Alex feels a sudden wave of arousal course through her as she watches him, standing on the curb cloaked in the glow of streetlamps and moonlight, “Oh, darling,” she lets her eyes roam over his body pointedly, “I felt what you were working with the other night. I don’t think there’d be anything _funny_ about it.”

By the time they’re standing on her porch behind Edna’s – lights out, thank god – she feels like the tension between them is palpable. She wonders if it’s just her – if she really has been so long without a bit that she’s been imagining desire where none exists. But when she sees Matt look at her, sees the way his eyes are almost black in her dim porch light, she knows she hasn’t been.

“I had a lovely time with you, Alex,” he whispers, leaning in close to her lips.

He brushes his lips softly against hers and she feels herself lean into him, her body arcing towards him and he brings his hand up to cup her cheek, his lips still working softly against hers.

He dips his tongue in her mouth and she feels her knees go a bit wobbly, suddenly thankful that his other hand has somehow slid around her waist. He tastes of salt and margarita and that same heady thing she’d tasted on her birthday.

They kiss for what feels like a small eternity, and Alex feels her back pressed up against her locked door, Matt’s hands in her hair, his lips fused to hers as he kisses her passionately. Her hands grasp at his back and she can’t help the little noises of pleasure that emanate from her throat at his nearness.

Unexpectedly, his hips shift into hers and she gasps sharply at the sensation of his hardness pressing against her.

Matt jerks his hips back, pulling away from her mouth, “Shit, I’m sorry, Alex,” he whispers, panting a bit as his forehead rests against hers.

Alex has a decision to make, she knows. She can end the night here, send him on his merry way back to his flat hard and aching. She can go inside her own flat alone, spread herself on the bed, and let her hands soothe her body, let her rabbit try to fill the ache he’s left in her. Or…

She reaches her hand out and grips his hip, tugging him into her, “I’m not,” she rasps, pointedly arching her hips into him.

He gasps and then his mouth is on hers again, hot and searching, his tongue moving over hers as her flesh burns with her desire for him. She vaguely wonders again just what in the hell she is doing with someone so bloody young, wondering what sort of madness has overcome her, but then she feels him press his hips into her again and he _groans_ and she decides she doesn’t very well care because she _wants him_. And it is very clear that he wants her.

Alex tears her mouth from his, “Do you want to come in?” She asks, panting and breathless as she moves to unlock the door.

Matt practically _growls_ his answer, “Bloody hell, _yes_.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt smiles, “Like that, do you?”
> 
> Alex makes a sound of agreement, then chuckles, “There’s not a thing about what we just did that I didn’t like.”
> 
> He laughs then, the sound carrying in the otherwise empty bedroom, “Oh, so very much the same here, love. You are brilliant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Please read this, as I've got a few content warnings here for this chapter.
> 
> First - this chapter is very NSFW - if that's not your thing, skip to the cut (the X designating a change in perspective - and then avoid the end of this chapter as well [you'll see it coming]).
> 
> Second - there is a very brief mention of miscarrying.
> 
> Third - there is a mention of self-harm/attempting. 
> 
> That's all - nothing (except the sex) is described in great detail, but I did want to mention just in case.

She pushes open the door, dragging him in by his t-shirt behind her. When they’re inside, she flicks on the light and spins, looping her arms around his neck and kissing him, her mouth slanting over his as her tongue explores his mouth.

They stumble down the hall towards Alex’s bedroom, tearing off clothes as they go. Alex pushes Matt up against the wall, stopping to lift the hem of his t-shirt, dropping it unceremoniously to the floor once it’s over his head. Her eyes drink him in, skittering across his bare chest, and then she kisses his neck, her teeth scraping over his collarbone while his hands work at the button of her jeans.

She drops her hand to his wrist and tugs him along, working on her own fly as they go. By the time they get to her room, he’s in his boxer briefs and she’s in her bra and knickers. They stand for a minute, each staring at the other, eyes roving.

Alex thinks for a moment that she should be self-conscious – no one has seen her like this in nearly two years. But she sees Matt’s gaze rake down her body, sees his eyes darken, and there is no mistaking the look of hunger she sees there – the same one she knows she is sending back to him in spades.

Their mouths meet again, one of them closing the distance, and they tumble onto the bed.

Matt kisses his way down her neck, nipping and sucking the flesh before he moves lower, his tongue ghosting across her cleavage. His hand lightly trails up her thigh and over her abdomen until he cups one breast in his hand – his mouth moves to the other, wetting the fabric of her lace bra as he kisses her through the thin material.

He reaches up to push the straps down her arms – first one, then the other – and then Alex sits up a bit, reaching behind herself and unclasping her bra, tossing it on the floor beside the bed as she lays back down. Matt stills then, his eyes watching her, his nostrils flared.

“You are bloody _gorgeous_ ,” he whispers, his eyes boring into her.

Alex bites her lip, and then Matt surges forward, capturing her mouth with his again.

His hands skate over her bare flesh now, twisting and pulling at one nipple and then the other, and Alex arches her back off the bed, his hands working her flesh like this isn’t the first time he’s touched her. Matt dips his head again, his mouth covering one nipple as he rolls the other between his fingertips, pinching lightly. His eyes are on her face, dark and curious as he looks at her, and her hands move to his head, holding him against her.

His teeth scrape over her nipple and she cries out, her eyes fluttering closed.

“Oh, yes, darling – use your teeth,” Matt bites down gently on one, then moves to the other, nipping a little harder, “God, just like that.”

Matt moans around her, and then his hand slides down over her stomach, tickling the skin there. His hand slips under the waistband of her knickers and his fingers find her, touching her _exactly_ where she wants.

“God,” He speaks around her breast, and Alex whimpers at the muffled sound of it, “You’re so wet, Alex,” his fingers swirl against her and all she can do is bite her lip and offer a nod because she _is_.

He slides a finger into her, and she clutches at his shoulder, throwing her head back into the pillow. She hasn’t had anyone’s fingers but her own inside of her for such a long time, and he is _so good_ at this. His thumb moves against her clit and she feels herself clenching around him.

Matt groans, pulling his finger out and then sliding it slowly back in again – he repeats the action, mouth alternating between her breasts, watching her face intently as he fucks her with his finger. He adds a second and Alex tips her head back, moving her hips along with his thrusts, his thumb still working on her clit.

She inches her hand from his shoulder, sliding it down his chest until she’s cupping him through the material of his boxer briefs. He’s hard in her hand and she feels the sharp intake of his breath against her skin. She squeezes him gently, adding a bit more pressure the second time as her hand works him up and down through the material.

Deciding it’s not enough, she reaches her hand inside the waistband, feeling him hot and hard beneath her soft palm.

“ _Alex_ ,” He hisses, his fingers pausing their ministrations just for a moment before starting again, his pace increasing.

Alex’s hand slides along his hot flesh, and _god_ she had missed touching a man like this. She swirls her thumb around his tip, feeling the wetness there, and she smiles. Her hand moves quicker then, and suddenly Matt’s free hand moves to grasp her wrist, stilling her movements.

“Alex,” He rasps, and lord if she couldn’t get used to this man saying her name like that, “You’re too good at this, love – you have to stop or I’m going to –”

Alex nods, relaxing her grip a bit and caressing him gently, her fingers moving lightly against him. She smirks a bit, secretly pleased that apparently she hasn’t lost her touch.

Matt starts kissing his way down her stomach, his fingers still working, and then he pulls her knickers down with his free hand; Alex’s hips tilt up to help him work them over her hips, her hand still grasping him lightly.

He moves to bend his head, to lick her, and _god_ does she want to feel his tongue on her. But it has been _so_ long, and she can feel how thick and hard he is in her hand, and she wants him inside of her _rightfuckingnow_.

Alex’s free hand drops down to his hair, her fingers threading through his locks. She tugs, stopping him, and he looks up at her with a mixture of confusion and – _disappointment_?

_Oh_.

Matt’s fingers still inside of her, and she smiles down at him.

“You don’t want…?” Matt says, confused.

“God, yes, darling, I do – but,” she squeezes her hand around him, “I need you _inside_ – I, god, I need to feel you, Matt,” she says, whimpering as she clenches around his fingers.

Matt smirks, drawing his fingers slowly out of her. His eyes lock on hers as he draws his fingers into his mouth, sucking on them as he watches her. Alex feels the heat pool between her legs as he moans – _fucking moans_ – around his fingers.

He releases his fingers and grins at her, “ _Lovely_.” He stands and pushes his boxer briefs over his hips and her eyes drop to his erection immediately. She bites her lip, and Matt’s eyes darken.

He crawls back on the bed and kisses her, his tongue slipping into her mouth; she can taste herself on his tongue and she groans, her fingers clutching at his back, fingertips digging into his skin.

“Condom,” he pants, pulling away from her – his trousers are in the hall, and he moves to leave the bed, but she holds him in place.

“Are you clean?” She asks, her fingers circling tightly around his base.

Matt nods, “Yes,” his brow is furrowed in confusion.

“Me too,” Alex pants, then drags her hand up his length and back down again, watching as he closes his eyes and his hips buck into her hand. “And I can’t –” she starts, but she doesn’t finish the words, not wanting to go there _now_. She sees he understands and his hand drops down to play with her nipple, “Inside,” she pants, and he nods, moving a bit lower down her body.

He kneels in front of her and his eyes drop down between her legs. He runs his finger over her softly, dipping it into her once, twice, watching as she responds to him. Finally, he positions himself at her entrance, gripping himself at his base as his eyes lock on hers.

Matt watches her face as he pushes into her slowly, _so slowly_ \- his eyes locked on hers the entire time, _watching her_ as he enters her. It’s the most erotic thing she’s ever seen, and she resists the urge to let her eyes flutter closed.

When he’s finally buried himself in her, he pauses, watching – “You okay?”

And the fact that he’s even _asking,_ that he even _cares_ fills her with sudden emotion. She bites her lip, nodding, her eyes on his, “It’s just – been awhile,” she confesses, quietly.

Matt leans down, balancing on one hand as he presses a tender kiss to her lips. His free hand plays with her nipple and he pulls back, dropping his mouth to her ear so he can whisper inside of it, his voice gruff but still somehow tender, “Tell me when you’re ready, love.”

_God_ , the sound of his voice in her ear ratchets her arousal up even higher – a fact she’d honestly not though possible, and her fingernails trace lightly down his spine, “I’m ready, darling,” she says, “ _Move_.”

Matt does, pulling out of her slowly, and then pushing back in, his eyes watching her face for any sign of discomfort. What little there is fades quickly, replaced only with the sensation of him inside of her. She bucks her hips up in time with his slow thrusts, swiveling her hips a bit as they meet, and she watches Matt’s face. The pleasure he feels is written all over his face, his hair dropping in his eyes, and _fuck_ he looks sexy like this.

Alex shifts her leg higher up his waist, and moans at the sensation the new angle provides. “ _Deeper_ , darling,” she pleads, and Matt takes the cue, grabbing her leg and hitching it up over his shoulder.

Alex gasps at how full she feels now, at how deeply he slides within her, his pace still slow and steady – _sensual_. Her hands fall to her breasts and she pinches and pulls her nipples; Matt sees her and groans, his hands watching her play with herself as he thrusts, his rhythm picking up just a bit.

Alex can feel herself cresting higher, and as if reading her mind, Matt’s hand drops between their bodies and she feels his thumb brush across her clit, “Do you like it like this?” He asks, lightly caressing her.

“A bit more,” Alex cries out as his hips propel him into her, “A bit more pressure,” She finishes, and Matt obliges, touching her _exactly_ the way she likes to be touched.

“Like this?” He asks, his thumb continuing its work.

Alex nods, biting her lip because the pleasure is rapidly becoming too much to bear. “Harder, darling,” she says, knowing exactly what will send her over the edge, “Fuck me harder, Matt,” she whispers, her hands still working on her nipples. “I’m so close.”

“God, Alex, yes – come for me, love – I want to feel you come around me,” his voice is ragged, his breathing quick and Alex moans as he changes his pace.

Matt pulls out and pushes into her hard – and then he does it again, and again, and again, and his thumb never stops working her and Alex feels herself falling over the edge of oblivion, Matt’s name on her lips as she comes around him, his rhythm and touch exactly what she needs, exactly what she likes.

She clenches around him, and he does not stop, his hips snapping into hers at the same pace, his thumb keeping the same pressure until she cries out again and she doesn’t think she’s ever come _this_ hard. His thumb eases off the pressure as she winds back down, gently caressing her clit as the aftershocks rock through her and she shudders, her body still on high alert.

Alex notices Matt’s stuttered rhythm, and she knows he’s close, “So _fucking_ beautiful you are, Alex,” Matt murmurs, and his hips stutter again and suddenly he cries out, her name and a mixture of curses falling from his lips as he comes, and Alex has never heard her own name sound so sweet.

He collapses on top of her, then rolls to the side, pulling her into his side so that her left arm is draped across his stomach.

Alex can hear his heart beat in his chest, wild and free, and she feels like she should be on the edge of shame for what they’d just done, but she isn’t and the realization shocks her a bit. This man, this lovely young man who asked her what she likes in bed has just made her come harder than she ever has in her life and now he’s holding her, one hand in her hair, smoothing it from her face, and the other running lightly up and down her arm.

If she hadn’t been in trouble before, she certainly was now because _oh_ , she could build a life here, in his arms. And that is a dangerous thing to want because there is so much she cannot give him.

x

Matt’s hand rests in her mass of curls, his fingernails lightly scraping her scalp and she hums in pleasure, burrowing into him a bit more.

Matt smiles, “Like that, do you?”

Alex makes a sound of agreement, then chuckles, “There’s not a thing about what we just did that I didn’t like.”

He laughs then, the sound carrying in the otherwise empty bedroom, “Oh, so very much the same here, love. You are brilliant.”

She smiles against his chest and her left hand starts tracing little patterns over his chest. He is telling the truth – and he doesn’t just mean the sex. He’d been in awe of this woman before he’d even met her, true. It was hard not to be. But now that he’s met her, it’s taken on a life of its own, his admiration. He’d never met anyone like her before – she is so talented, so self-assured, and yet at the same time so vulnerable and sometimes unsure.

It is an odd combination, but one he found irresistible even before he knew how well they worked in the bedroom. And, oh, they did work. Matt had always considered himself rather a good lover with the right partner, but he’d never had it quite so good as it was tonight, with her.

The hand that isn’t buried in her hair traces idly down her arm, his fingers dancing over ink. He feels her stiffen a bit and then relax against him as his finger follows the lines and curves of her tattoos.

Matt feels unexpected emotion well in his throat because he honestly hadn’t been expecting this tonight and it feels so tender between them.

“What’s your story, Kingston?” His lips brush against her hairline, “How’d you come to _tattooing_ of all things?”

Alex sighs against his chest, “Simple story, really. Wanted to be an actress, went to school, met my first husband, he became a successful actor and destroyed me in the process.” Her voice is careful, and Matt wishes he could see her face, “He felt badly enough during the divorce, I guess, because he agreed to a pretty great settlement for me, and I looked for something he would _hate_ – tattooing sounded the most fun,” she smiles now, laughing a bit, “I took the money from the settlement and set it aside, started apprenticing for awhile before I learned I was a pretty quick study. I opened my own shop within two years.”

“You’re a fantastic artist, Alex,” Matt whispers, his hand still dancing along her skin, “And your ex-husband didn’t _destroy_ you – god, you – you’re _brilliant_.”

“Thank you, darling.”

Matt feels the nerves tighten in his stomach, briefly thinks he shouldn’t ask but he can’t help it, he wants every part of her she’s willing to give him – he taps her tattooed arm with his fingertips, “And what about this story?”

Alex pulls her head back to look at him, rolling onto her back just a bit more. She draws her bottom lip into her mouth, her teeth working on the skin. The indecision flickers across her face, but she sighs, draping the canvas that is her left arm across his chest.

“Alright,” she sighs, “But only the highlights.”

When he grins and nods, Alex smiles at him and then drags her fingers across a little pastoral scene on her arm, three tiny shadowy figures running in a field – music notes drifting up from their tiny bodies. It’s small, but quite clear, “My childhood,” she explains, her eyes darting up to his and then back down again. Her fingers ghost along two Victorian looking cameos, one male and one female, “My parents.” She smiles fondly, her fingers running gently over the outline of their faces.

She turns her arm and points at a little cluster of tiny black birds on her bicep, small but clear – they remind Matt of something a child would draw to represent birds flying in the distance, “Miscarriages.” Her voice is pained, quiet, and Matt reaches up to grasp her hand, squeezing her fingers. She smiles, but it’s meek, “We tried so hard for so long.” Alex’s eyes look wet and she pauses for a moment in her sadness before she takes a shaky breath.

She clears her throat, smiling a bit self-consciously, and then points at a Technicolor peacock, big and beautiful, its colorful feathers splaying out proudly, “My daughter,” she whispers, reverently.

Alex flips her arm over and her fingers trace along rough waves painted over a vertical scar on her wrist, “Divorce. My first.” She points at a ship, tattered sails coming out of a storm and heading into a sunrise, a brilliant optical illusion, “My second.” She laughs, “Hopefully, my last.”

Matt is speechless for a moment, watching as she looks at her arm, taking in all of the ink there. He wouldn’t think to put any of these images together – well, not all of them at least –but the way it’s designed is _beautiful_. Everything ebbs and flows perfectly; the colors are bright and vivid in their complement of each other, everything working in beautiful concert. It’s a masterpiece, a piece of artwork on her skin, so obviously personal and meaningful and she’s shared at least a bit of it with him.

He picks her hand up gently from where it rests against his stomach then turns it over in his hand so that her palm is facing up. He lifts his head up and places a soft kiss against her palm, “Thank you,” He whispers, and then his lips trail lightly along her scar – the vertical one dragged down her wrist. He thinks about how much pain she must have been in to carve her flesh like this, and he feels his eyes burn. His heart aches at the sight of it, even with ink on top of it. Matt’s tongue darts out to trace the scar back down again, “I’m sorry.” He speaks against her skin, his lips on her scar, his eyes on hers – she looks mesmerized as she watches him, “I’m glad you’re still here.”

Alex’s eyes are wet and he kisses his way down her palm, and then he takes her finger in his mouth, his tongue working around her index finger slowly, watching as her eyes widen and her nostrils flare at the feel of his tongue swirling around her finger.

Matt rolls her on her back, kissing her, his tongue sweeping along her lips before he moves down her neck, trailing a path with his tongue until he’s at her breasts. He licks and caresses her, playfully biting her nipple.

She gasps his name, laughing a bit as she looks at him.

Matt nuzzles his face between her breasts, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead – he grins at her, “I thought you liked to make the same mistake twice, Kingston?”

He’s joking, of course, but her eyes cloud over a bit and she looks at him seriously, “Who said you were a mistake, darling?”

Matt chuckles, nipping at the underside of her breast, “That’s what I’ve been trying to show you all night, Alex – that I’m not.”

Matt kisses his way down her stomach, smiling when she threads her fingers through his hair. When he settles between her thighs, she doesn’t stop him this time. Instead, her fingers tighten in his hair and he smiles, watching her face as she looks down at him, her eyes hooded and heavy.

He gently pulls on her knees and she lets her legs fall open; he leans forward, swiping his tongue along her length and the taste dances across his tongue – it’s not just her now, though he can taste her on his tongue just as well as he had earlier. This time it’s _them_ , and while he’s never really minded tasting himself like this, there’s something about their flavors mixed together that make him moan against her and bury his face deeper, his tongue working its way inside of her.

Alex sighs, her fingers scraping lightly against his scalp as he laps at her, slowly, taking his time. He builds her up slowly too, using _only_ his mouth on her, his hands reaching up to play with her breasts, her flesh soft and warm in his hands. His tongue licks at her clit, and he watches her face, gauging her reaction to find out what she does and doesn’t like. He pays attention to her breathing, to her fingers in his hair, how they tighten when he hits a pressure she finds particularly enjoyable.

Soon, he’s learned exactly how to lick her and he brings her to the edge and then promptly over it, moaning against her as she comes in his mouth, her hands fisting in his hair as she holds his mouth to her, his eyes never leaving her face as she comes, moaning his name so sweetly: _yes, Matt… darling, yes_.

When her grip on his hair loosens, he licks at her gently, feeling her body shudder beneath him. Her eyes finally flutter open, and she looks down at him, inhaling sharply when she notices his eyes focused on her face, his mouth still against her. He licks her again and she gasps, pulling away from him slightly, too sensitive now. He smiles against her, places a tender kiss, and then crawls back up her body, settling beside her again.

“That was…” She starts, but trails off, shaking her head as she rests her head on his chest again.

Matt laughs softly, brushing her curls back and kissing her hairline, “It was. I quite liked doing that, in case you couldn’t tell.”

Alex laughs then, and her voice is sleepy when she speaks, “I could tell, darling.”

He smiles against her hair and wraps his arms tightly around her – they fall to sleep soon after, and when they wake the next morning, tangled and aroused, they make love again in the morning light – and Matt thinks not for the first time that he could build a life around the way she says his name.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She sighs, “Not tonight, darling, I’m – well, I’m knackered. And I’ve got that awards ceremony thing early in the morning for my daughter,” she tucks her ink bottles in the cabinet above her station. “You go, have fun, Matt.” She tosses a paper towel stained with ink in the trashcan.
> 
> He watches her carefully, “You’re sure?”
> 
> She nods, “Absolutely.”

As he leaves her flat that morning, Matt wonders what will happen – they hadn’t talked anything about what comes next. He knows what he _wants_ to come next, of course. But he fears Alex doesn’t feel the same – or, perhaps worse, won’t _let_ herself feel the same.

But Matt is surprised – he asks her out again, and she says yes. As the weeks pass, he brings her coffee; she brings him sweets, having found his affinity for them. They go on dates, shag like mad, and leave the shop together more often than not most nights. They still haven’t talked about anything, but it feels very much as though they are together. Properly in a relationship.

Matt longs to ask – longs to have _the conversation_ , but he fears scaring her away. He also fears reminding her of his age, because she brings it up now and then in a self-deprecating way that he’s stopped laughing at after a month because these feelings in his heart for her, well – they aren’t particularly funny.

He and Alex haven’t exactly told anyone anything – well, he’s told his family back home that he’s met someone, but does his best to avoid questions that probe too deeply because he doesn’t know how to answer a single one of them. But he and Alex are out together so much that it seems Arthur and Karen have caught on. Karen makes little kissy faces when Alex’s back is turned, and Matt wants to stick his tongue out at her like the bratty kid sister she feels like, but he doesn’t, worried Alex will catch him and immediately realize what a child he is sometimes.

But he’s happy with how things are going – he spends the night at hers when she doesn’t have her daughter, she comes over to his for a quick shag on lunch break. Matt has even met Edna, watched a couple of Law and Orders with she and Alex and fixed a couple of Edna’s cabinets for her so they don’t squeak anymore.

It’s nearly two months into their _whatever_ it is when he’s standing in the shop, watching Arthur and Alex chat. Matt watches as Arthur laughs, then shakes his head and walks away. Matt turns to Karen, goofing off a bit with her – she insults him and he pulls her hair, laughing when she squeals a bit, smacking him on the shoulder.

Karen rolls her eyes but smiles, “Come to the pub with us tonight, Matt!” She says, swinging her legs from the table on which she sits.

Matt laughs, “You’ve been here long enough, Kazza, it’s time to assimilate – they call them _bars_ here.”

She huffs, “Whatever – come to the _bar_ ,” she imitates a perfect American accent, “With us tonight then.” At his questioning look, she shrugs, “Me and Darvill.” Suddenly, her face lights up, “Ooh! Can you get _Alex_ to come? She hasn’t been out with us in ages – not since you two started…” Karen trails off, looking a bit pale, “Doing whatever it is you do…” She waves her hand, “Come on,” she whines, leaning in close to Matt like she’s telling him a secret, “Ask her!”

Matt _loves_ going places with Alex; anywhere, really – and a bar does sound fun, since it’s been a rather long week. He turns around to head towards Alex and finds her already watching him with a rather dark expression. It’s gone after just a moment though, and Matt’s left wondering if he imagined it.

Shaking the thought off, he walks over to where she stands across the room. “Do you want to go to the bar down the street tonight?” He looks at her hopefully, “With Karen and Darvill?”

Alex brushes her curls out of her face and looks at him – something ghosts across her face, and he tries to decipher it but once again it’s gone too soon.

She sighs, “Not tonight, darling, I’m – well, I’m knackered. And I’ve got that awards ceremony thing early in the morning for my daughter,” she tucks her ink bottles in the cabinet above her station. “You _go_ , have fun, Matt.” She tosses a paper towel stained with ink in the trashcan.

He watches her carefully, “You’re sure?”

She nods, “Absolutely.”

Matt sighs, running a hand through his hair – something feels off here, but he can’t figure out what it is.

“At least let me stay and help you clean up?”

She nods again, and Matt goes to tell Karen that he’ll be at the bar in a bit, but Alex won’t. After Karen and Arthur leave, Matt helps Alex clean up shop – takes out the trash, disposes of the needles, organizes her station just the way she likes it while she finishes up a sketch for her client tomorrow.

They’re quiet, but it feels a bit strained, and Matt longs to ask her what’s wrong – longs to beg her to talk to him, but he doesn’t. When she’s done with her sketch, he walks her to her car and they part with a sweet kiss, and he brushes the curls out of her eyes and tells her he’ll miss her tonight.

She casts her eyes down at the asphalt beneath her feet, “I’ll miss you too, darling.” She whispers, planting a kiss on his cheek and sliding in her car, not looking at him.

Matt watches her drive away, watches until she turns right at the end of the block and her taillights disappear from his view. He jogs down the street to the bar, finding it quite packed. He heads through the crowd, weaving in and out of people before he finally spots Karen’s bright red hair at the end of a bar.

She’s sitting talking to Darvill, a slightly serious look on her face. He wonders if he should interrupt, but he’s really only here to hang out with them – otherwise, he’d be at his own flat or, better yet, Alex’s. Sighing as he sees a group of girls looking at him, their eyes wandering up and down his frame, he pushes towards Karen and Arthur, lest one of the girls approach him.

Matt approaches them from the side, nearly stumbling between them, “Sorry about that!” He yells over the music, noticing how their conversation immediately stops.

“Matt!” Karen exclaims, inching over on her stool a bit closer to Arthur so Matt can stand on the other side of her.

They all chat for a few minutes, Matt ordering a beer, before Arthur stands, slaps a bill on the bar, and bids them goodnight, pressing a kiss to Karen’s cheek and not looking at Matt as he gives a little wave and heads out into the night.

“Was it something I said?” Matt slides onto the newly vacant barstool, gripping his beer in one hand as he looks at Karen.

She glances down at the bar, her finger drawing idle circles on the wood, “He’s… just been in a mood lately,” she shrugs, picking up her beer bottle and taking a swig.

Matt nods, unconvinced, “He’s in love with her, isn’t he?”

Karen’s jaw hangs open and she looks at him, stunned, “No, he’s not… I mean, he doesn’t…” Finally, she gives up, “How did you know?”

He shrugs, “I’m not blind.”

“He doesn’t… blame you, or anything. It’s just… hard for him.”

“I know. I can understand that… she’s…” He trails off, trying to find the right words to describe Alex, unable to find one that is adequate, one that even begins to describe her.

Karen laughs around the mouth of her beer bottle, “Yeah, she is. And don’t you bloody hurt her – _or_ forget it!” Karen points at him, her eyebrows furrowing in the middle as she tries to look threatening.

“I won’t,” Matt says somberly.

Karen considers him, her gaze searching his face, trying to determine if he’s telling the truth. _He is_. He has no intention of hurting Alex, particularly because he’s fallen quite in love with her.

As if deciding he is to be trusted, Karen smiles, finishing off her beer.

Matt does the same, pushing the empty bottle in front of him towards the edge of the bar, “And she doesn’t have _any_ idea?”

She laughs, tossing her head back, “Of course not, idiot. She’s Alex – no clue how brilliant and amazing, not to mention bloody _gorgeous_ she is.” Karen shakes her head.

He eyes her suspiciously, “Is Arthur the _only one_ with a crush?”

Karen gasps and then flushes, staring at him wide eyed, “Oh _shut up_. I’m not into women.” She rolls her eyes, “Though, if I _were_ …”

Matt laughs, rolling his eyes as he orders another round. He and Karen spend the night chatting – Karen scoping out guys, Matt blathering on about Alex, grateful to have someone he can chat to who won’t ask a million questions that Matt honestly doesn’t know the answer to: _where is this going, how does she feel about you, is it serious?_ He knows what he _wants_ those answers to be, but not quite what they are.

He and Karen close the place down, each of them drinking a little too much. He ends up having to take a cab home and he crawls into bed clutching his phone and trying to resist the urge to call Alex. He had fun with Karen, of course, but Alex has been the only thing on his mind all night. He unlocks his phone and pulls up her number, his finger hovering over it until he looks at the clock at the top of the screen – _2:34am_ –and she has an early morning.

Sighing, he rolls onto his side, clutching his phone to his chest _just in case_.

Matt wakes up with a headache, feeling slightly hungover and _dear god_ does he hate the bloody sun. He takes a quick shower, calls a cab to work, and arrives fifteen minutes late. He hasn’t been late since the very first time he came to the shop, and he feels a bit nervous about it. He hadn’t heard from Alex this morning, either, which felt a bit weird. He should have called or texted her but he’d been in such a rush to get to the studio he didn’t stop to think of it in the moment.

He pays the cab, moves his car to a different spot thanking some kind of god that he didn’t get a ticket overnight. He jogs up the stairs, trying to do his very best to not trip through the French doors into the studio yet again. Mentally patting himself on the back when he succeeds, the first thing he does when he’s through the door is scan the shop for Alex.

He doesn’t see her, though, and his eyes fall on Karen, slumped on the couch, her head in her hands. Smiling, Matt makes his way over to her and nudges her with his foot.

“Morning, sunshine!” Matt’s voice booms just a little bit loud on purpose.

Karen’s eyes snap to his and she looks like she wants to strangle him with her bare hands, “Has anyone ever told you that you have a _really_ stupid face?”

Matt laughs, tossing his head back, “Not in so many words, but I’m flattered you think so,” Matt teases – he’s very close to his sister back at home and he rather misses her; Karen, he decides, might be a good substitute, “You look _lovely_ this morning.”

Karen glares at him and he grins, sitting down next to her on the couch – he sits unusually close to her just to annoy her, and it works. She immediately pushes him away – or tries to, anyway. He’s laughing, just about to push back into her when he hears a throat clear from across the room.

Matt glances up and sees Alex, framed by the morning light streaming through the skylights. She’s staring at him and Matt freezes, suddenly struck by her beauty and the true weight of his emotions for her.

“Morning, Alex,” Matt grins, then finally lets go of Karen, shuffling away from her a bit on the couch before he stands up and walks over to Alex.

She looks beautiful in the morning light, but Matt notices the circles under her eyes and a bit of redness in the whites of her eyes – like she’d been up late or perhaps crying. Furrowing his brow, he tucks his finger under her chin.

“You okay?”

Alex nods once, removing her chin from his finger, “Yes, I’m fine – just had an early morning.”

She doesn’t look at him, looking at his shirt, the floor, various different places, but refusing to meet his gaze.

She busies herself at her station, prepping for her client, “So, did you three have fun last night, then?”

Matt reaches up to grab her ink bottles from the cupboard, knowing which ones she wants for the design today, “Arthur had to take off right when I got there, actually. But Karen and I – yeah, we had a good time.” He laughs, “We closed the place down, actually, and I had to catch a _cab_ back to my flat.”

He notices her freeze for a second, her hand grasping a paper towel – he looks at her face curiously and she is ashen, her skin so pale. She presses her eyes shut tightly, and then she turns to look at him, finally looking him in the eyes the first time this morning.

“Matt – can we – can we _talk_?” Her voice quivers a bit, and Matt feels a rush of adrenaline shoot through his body – something is wrong.

She indicates her head to the back room of the shop and he nods mutely, following silently behind her until they’re in the tiny room and she shuts the door behind them, turning to face him.

“I can’t – can’t do this with you, Matt.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can’t do what anymore?” Matt edges the words out. 
> 
> She gestures between them, “This, Matt – I can’t… I’ve been here before so many times… and I don’t want to be a phase… something that doesn’t last, that can never last. I just… can’t be, not again.”
> 
> “A phase?” He stares at her in disbelief, “What in the bloody hell are you talking about, Alex?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I got another tattoo today nearly a year to the day after I visited the shop in which this story began. Literally - I started writing it right then, on the couch in the studio, even though I was in the middle of what would turn out to be a 124k fic. 
> 
> In honor of that, here's the next chapter!

Alex wakes without an alarm. Stretching, she reaches for her phone, her face falling when she sees no text or call from Matt last night. As she gets up and makes coffee, preparing herself for the day, she tries to not let the suspicion eat at her. He’d been tired, probably, just fallen asleep. But ever since the betrayal by her first husband, letting suspicion go wasn’t _exactly_ her strong suit.

She worries all morning, though she tries to talk herself out of it, and by the time she hears a knocking on her door, she’s almost succeeded – it’s _Matt_. He’s one of the sweetest men she’s ever met – certainly one of the sweetest she’s ever dated. She’s being silly, she thinks, as she makes her way to the door. Absolutely silly.

The door swings open and she greets her ex-husband with a smile. She’s expecting him, of course – they’re taking their daughter to the awards event together, in an effort to give her some semblance of their former life, though they’re very much divorced now and have been for over a year and were separated even long before that.

Her smile falters as she takes in his drawn brow, his dark gaze – she’d seen this look on him enough times during their years together, particularly during the last couple, to know that he is very cross. And by the way he stalks past her, tension rolling off him in waves, she knows he’s likely cross _with her_.

“Come in.” It’s sarcastic, but she can’t help it. She closes the door behind her and turns to find him pacing in her tiny living room, “What have I done now?”

Her ex-husband tosses a glossy paper on the coffee table and she immediately recognizes it with its bold and loud print as a tabloid.

She steps closer to the coffee table, “What’s this, then?” She clears her throat.

“What’s it look like, Alex?” He snaps, staring at her.

She reaches down and picks up the glossy magazine, seeing herself on the cover, and more than once. An old shot from when she went to the Academy Awards with her first husband is inset – and larger than that, a rather grainy picture of she and Matt on one of their dates from a few weeks ago.

“Your _little relationship_ ,” he growls, pulling out his phone and pressing a few buttons, “is all over the tabloids and internet,” he jabs his phone out at her and shows her a twitter page, but she doesn’t read the tweet. “You and your new _boyfriend_ are apparently _trending_.”

Alex is not a celebrity; she was only on the periphery of that life years ago when she was with her ex-husband. Still, she is a name in Los Angeles, connected in her distant past to someone who is known internationally and around the world; someone who has his name and sex scandals in the papers every other day, so she’s not surprised that news of her _whatever_ with Matt has hit a gossip column and then been picked up on the blasted internet and gone _viral_.

She’d been so happy with Matt these past few weeks – they’d fallen into a sort of routine, really. Maybe even a relationship, though neither of them have explicitly discussed it. She glances down at the tabloid she’d tossed back on the table and reads the headline – it’s not flattering to her by any stretch, and it’s like a gut punch. She clenches her fist and squeezes her eyes shut.

“What are you doing, Alex?” Her ex scoffs, “He’s half your age.”

Alex snorts, feeling the anger rise up over the shame for the first time since she saw the tabloid; she opens her eyes and fixes her fiery gaze on him: “You never were good at maths.”

He scoffs now, staring at her. Silence passes between them and Alex can feel his anger building, gathering strength. Finally, he looks at her and disdain curls his lips as he speaks, “You look _ridiculous_ , I hope you know.”

Alex feels her heart sink – it isn’t that she cares what her ex-husband thinks of her anymore. She absolutely doesn’t – but he’s standing here now in her flat reciting the exact thoughts she’s been trying to push down now for weeks. The little voice in the back of her head has been telling her this exact thing or some variation of it since before she even let Matt into her bed.

She does her best to hide her wince, glaring at him instead, “Thanks for the commentary, Florian.” She crosses her arms over her chest, “But this isn’t any of your business.”

He narrows his eyes, “It is my business when it concerns my daughter.”

“ _Our_ daughter, actually. It took the both of us if you remember – and I had angry bruises for months from those shots so – _our daughter_. And she hasn’t met him – it hasn’t interfered with her life in any way.”

“Oh no?” His words are terse, “And what about when her friends see that paper?” He nods in the direction of the coffee table, “Or their parents?” He shakes his head, his eyes narrowing in the way that means he’s about to get cruel, “Do you really think you can keep the attention of a _thirty-year-old man_?” He shrugs, “God, Alex, how are you not _embarrassed_ by this?”

Alex feels the rage settle in her bones, “Your girlfriend is – what? Twelve years younger than you?” He grits his teeth and she rolls her eyes, “So I really don’t know why you think you have the moral high ground here.” She grabs her bag and keys, “Stay the fuck out of my life, Florian, and I’ll stay the fuck out of yours. Agreed?”

He gives her a long look, his jaw set and clenching before he nods reluctantly and then follows her out the door, his face still clouded with rage.

Alex does her best to not let her sudden mood affect her morning with her daughter – she attends the award ceremony, claps the loudest when her daughter’s name is called, takes her out for a special breakfast just the two of them before dropping her back off at school.

But the minute she’s alone in her car driving to the shop, Alex feels the weight of the morning wash over her. She feels every doubt and insecurity she’s ever had weasel its way up to the surface of her heart, her ex-husband’s words ringing in her ear on a constant loop: _do you really think you can keep the attention of a thirty-year-old man? You look ridiculous. How are you not embarrassed?_

By the time she pulls up to the shop, she feels completely on-edge. She sees Matt’s car parked behind the shop and thinks maybe if she just _sees_ him, she can stop feeling like this. But when she gets to the top of the stairs, she finds he’s not there.

Alex just sees Karen, half asleep on the couch, looking a bit like death warmed over. Alex’s heart drops to her stomach – long night, then – and her ex’s words flit through her mind again: _do you really think you can keep the attention of a thirty-year-old man?_

She busies herself in the back, sketching, preparing for future clients, trying to do anything to keep her mind away from the wave of negativity brought by her ex this morning but she finds that she can’t. She can think of nothing but his words, nothing but Matt in someone else’s arms – someone younger than she is, someone lither than she is, and she _can’t_ go through that again. She won’t.

When she comes out of the back room and sees Matt sitting ridiculously close to Karen, smiling at her, leaning into her, Alex feels the cold dread drag through her veins. Still, she tries to keep it neutral – asking Matt about his night – and when she finds out that he and Karen had spent the night alone, despite the fact that Alex _knows_ a big part of her is simply being paranoid, that she’s letting past wounds shine through, she knows what she has to do.

Because the tabloids are right. Her ex-husband is right.

Alex pulls Matt into the back room and pretends not to see the worry etched on his face as she closes the door and tells him that she can’t do this with him, not anymore.

“Can’t do _what_ anymore?” Matt edges the words out.

She gestures between them, “This, Matt – I can’t… I’ve been here before _so many times_ … and I don’t want to be a phase… something that doesn’t last, that can _never last_. I just… can’t be, not again.”

“A _phase_?” He stares at her in disbelief, “What in the bloody hell are you talking about, Alex?”

Alex sighs, the sound deep and heavy, “I can’t pretend that this is something more than it is, Matt. The sex is great – beyond great – and you’re wonderful, but…” she trails off, but starts again – he at least deserves her honestly, “There’s no way that _I’m_ going to keep your attention for long, not when there are women out there who are _your own bloody age_ and who look like… like Karen.” Alex presses her eyes shut because she didn’t mean to say that, didn’t mean to be quite that honest about her insecurities, but she can’t pull the words back in now that they’re out – she sighs, rubbing her brow with her fingers. When she opens her eyes, Matt is staring at her incredulously.

“Okay so – what? This is – what? Over Kazza? Nothing happened between us last night if that’s what you’re…” he scrunches his nose up, “God, Alex, she’s like my bloody _sister_.”

Alex crosses her arms over her chest, unwilling to acknowledge the relief that courses through her at Matt’s words; it doesn’t matter, she still has to end this before… well, before. “Be that as it may, Matt – if it’s not Karen now it… it _will_ be someone someday. And, I…”

Matt interrupts her, his voice loud, “Jesus Christ, Alex, do you even hear yourself? When you’re in the room, I don’t even _notice_ other women. Hell, even when you’re not in the room. All I can look at – all I can _think about_ is you – do you understand?”

Alex feels her heart constrict in her chest at his words and at the plaintive look on his face, “Don’t.”

“Karen was right,” his voice is so quiet Alex strains to hear it, “You really _don’t_ see it, do you?”

Her eyes widen, “See what?”

“How I look at you – how damn near _every_ man looks at you.” Matt steps closer to her, “How _Arthur_ looks at you.”

Alex steps back from him, her eyebrows rising in surprise, “Arthur?” Her voice is a bit too loud for this small space.

“ _Arthur_.” Matt confirms, staring at her, “He _fancies_ you, Alex – _properly_ fancies you.”

She looks at him incredulously like he’s lost his bloody mind; clearly he has, “He doesn’t.”

Matt rolls his eyes, exasperated, “Tell me you don’t see how he looks at you.” At her blank stare, Matt continues, “All those concerts?”

Alex folds her arms over her chest, jutting her chin out, “We just happen to like the same type of music.”

Matt scoffs, “Yeah, Arthur seems like the real _Jackson Browne_ type.”

She fixes him with a hard stare, “What are you saying?”

Matt steps forward, “I’m saying, Alex, that – have you _ever_ heard the music Darvill plays when he’s tattooing?” He shakes his head, “It’s _nothing_ like the music you listen to.”

Alex tucks a curl behind her ear, suddenly unsure, “Maybe he has eclectic taste.”

He smiles gently, despite everything, “If _you’re_ eclectic – sure.”

“Matt don’t be ridiculous – Arthur is – he’s so young…”

“Yeah, and? He’s about the same age as me - and yet he still doesn’t seem to give a toss about your bloody age. In the exact same way I don’t.” He runs a hand through his hair, “So _stop_. You’re – Christ, you’re an amazing woman, I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re the bloody best and it’s time you realize that.”

Alex feels the tears behind her eyes and she speaks around the sudden lump in her throat. She wants to believe him, wants to step forward into the safety his arms, feel his warmth envelop her – but she can’t. She spent too many years being reckless with her heart and it nearly killed her.

She shakes her head sadly, “I can’t do this, Matt. I can’t do any of this. I’m too… old for all of this.”

Matt looks at her sadly, shaking his head in a perfect mirror of her own action, “You’re too _something_ , Alex, but _old_ isn’t it.”

She fixes her watery gaze on him, wishing this chasm in her chest would just disappear, “What am I, then?”

“Scared.”

Alex feels the word like a dagger in her stomach because she _is._ She doesn’t know how not to be, not anymore, “You would be, too, if you knew the things I know.”

His voice is gentle, sweet, and it somehow cuts her deeper than if he were yelling, “Yeah? Like what?”

She is crying now, but she swipes at her cheeks brushing the tears away before she levels her gaze, “Like no one ever _stays_ , Matt. No one.”

“So you might as well not give anyone the chance to prove you wrong, then?”

She tries a different tactic, because he’s right. She can’t let anyone in again, she’s been proven right one too many times, “The entire city is _laughing_ at me, Matt,”

“I don’t care what the entire city does or thinks, Alex, I only care what you think. What you do. That’s it.” He smiles at her, and it’s so sweet it makes her chest ache, “What do _you_ think?”

She thinks she loves him – she thinks she wants to take a demolition team to every wall she’s ever built around her heart, smash every single one to the ground and _love him_ amongst the rubble, but she can’t.

When she doesn’t answer, his smile falters, “Alex – is this – are you _embarrassed_ about being with me?”

Alex takes a deep, steadying breath, “No, Matt – I’m not. I’m not embarrassed, though according to my ex-husband and the LA Enquirer, I bloody well should be.” She sighs, “But you’re thirty years old, Matt. You’ve got your entire life ahead of you and I’ve – well, I’ve probably got most of mine behind me now. You’ll lose interest, darling, sooner or later. And honestly, I’m betting on sooner.”

“I won’t, Alex, I bloody well won’t. I’ll never not want you.” He looks at her, his eyes so sad, “I _love_ you.”

Alex gasps a bit – her heart reacting immediately because she’s quite far down that road herself, if she’s honest. But today has taught her that she _can’t_ be. She has to turn back, even if it’s painful. Because this will end – he will _leave her,_ and she can’t bear it. Not again. So, she does not react to his words, she just schools her expression and stares at him for a moment before she speaks.

“Darling,” she purses her lips, looking at him sadly, “You can’t even commit to a bloody tattoo – so forgive me for not believing you.” She sighs, “Go find someone your own age.”

Anger flashes behind Matt’s eyes, and Alex welcomes the sight of it, so much easier to bear than the sadness she’d seen just a moment ago.

“I don’t want someone my own age – I _want you_. And I think you want me too. Tell me you don’t want me, Alex – tell me all of this has meant nothing to you.”

Alex looks at him, her heart slamming in her chest – of course she wants him. Of _course_ this has meant something to her – _he_ means something to her - but she can’t tell him that without laying her heart bare and she’ll never do that again for any man. So she sets her jaw, looks at him with what she hopes is a convincing enough stare, and tells the lie: “You caught me when I was lonely, Matt. That’s all this is – has been – just a bit of fun.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes cloud over with something she easily recognizes: pain. And she knows she’s done it – she’s said the thing that will make him walk out of her life, but she’s never felt a more hollow victory.

Matt turns from her wordlessly and she watches as he walks the four steps to the door, his t-shirt stretched across his back and she knows that under that shirt are scratch marks made from her nails down his back. When his hand is on the doorknob, he pauses, turning to look at her.

“I don’t understand why you won’t just let yourself be happy, Alex.”

She longs to tell him the truth, to tell him why – because happiness is always ripped from her just when she starts to believe she deserves it, that she can build a home on it, that she can risk her heart on it.

But she doesn’t tell him. She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she watches him silently as he opens the door, shakes his head, takes one final look at her and walks out of her life.

And that look in his eye tells her he isn’t coming back.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You okay?” Arthur asks, his voice strangely quiet.
> 
> “No. No, I’m not.” She tosses her pencil on her drawing pad, “I’ve been working on this drawing for over an hour – normally something like this would take me – what? Two hours, tops? I’ve been at this for four and I’m not even halfway done.”
> 
> Arthur chuckles, peering at the drawing, “You’re a bit more than halfway, I’d say.”
> 
> She looks at him, annoyed, “So helpful, thank you.” She tips her head back in her chair, letting the back of her head rest on the top of the chair, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She closes her eyes, “My muse is broken.”
> 
> He sits down on the stool, rolling it a little closer to her, “Not your muse, I think.”

The weeks pass and spring turns into a very reluctant summer. June gloom clings in the sky, clouds sitting heavy over the city. It’s still a bit cold in a bitter way because there are fleeting moments where the sky breaks and you can see the sun; fleeting moments where you can feel the sun on your face, warming you to your bones but it’s gone too soon and it never stays.

Alex loves June most years – but she hates it this one, because it reminds her too much of everything she’s lost. Everything she gave up.

She hasn’t seen Matt in weeks, not since he walked out the door in her shop, packed his machines up, and left through those same French doors he’d first stumbled through months ago. The last thing she saw was his back, the same one he’d been on three nights prior as she rode him into oblivion.

Alex sighs, trying for the fourth time to get a line in her drawing right – her eraser smudges across the paper and she grits her teeth in frustration, the clouds dampening the natural light effect of the skylights. It’s as though the universe is not on her side, as though it is carrying out some ancient personal vendetta against her. And maybe it is – maybe she hasn’t been on good terms with the universe in a very long time.

Karen and Arthur sit in the corner of the shop, quietly chatting, and Alex feels a bit bad – she hasn’t been her normal self in the weeks since Matt left. Since she _made_ him leave. She’s been snappy and angry and everyone in her life has been walking on eggshells a bit because she’s – well – a little bit heartbroken. Or heartsick, if there’s a difference between those two things, she’s never been sure.

Alex tries the line for the fifth time and when she gets it wrong again she lets out a string of curses the likes of which few have ever heard – never let it be said that she is not _creative_. Arthur and Karen stop their chatting and Alex looks up at them apologetically, giving them a wan smile and a little wave of her hand as if to say _don’t mind me_.

Arthur makes his way across the studio then, his Converse quiet against the hardwood floors. Karen stands in the corner, watching him with an unreadable expression as she bites her lip in what looks like apprehension.

“You okay?” Arthur asks, his voice strangely quiet.

Alex sighs, whipping off her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose, “No. No, I’m not.” She tosses her pencil on her drawing pad, “I’ve been working on this drawing for over an hour – normally something like this would take me – what? Two hours, tops? I’ve been at this for _four_ and I’m not even halfway done.”

Arthur chuckles, peering at the drawing, “You’re a bit more than halfway, I’d say.”

She looks at him, annoyed, “So helpful, thank you.” She tips her head back in her chair, letting the back of her head rest on the top of the chair, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She closes her eyes, “My muse is broken.”

He sits down on the stool, rolling it a little closer to her, “Not your _muse_ , I think.”

Alex’s eyes snap open, her head shooting up to look at him straight on, “What, then?”

Arthur looks at her pointedly, “Your heart, maybe?”

Her eyes widen and she is _horrified_ to feel the tears burning at the back of her eyes – she just stares at him, speechless.

He runs a hand down his face, watching her carefully. He looks nervous and a bit frightened, his eyes searching her face, and Alex tilts her head in curiosity.

“He’s right, you know,” Arthur admits quietly.

Alex doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about; she already knows, “You heard?”

“Bit hard not to.” He knocks on the wall behind him, “Thin walls.” Arthur leans in close to her, his hand gently tapping her knee, “He _is_ right.”

She looks at him, her eyes wide, sure he cannot be admitting what she thinks he is. “About what?”

“About _everything_.” He sighs, not meeting her gaze, “Give him a chance, Alex – god, give _yourself_ a chance.”

Alex still feels the tears in her eyes but she blinks against them, trying to prevent them from falling; everything has been sitting at the surface for weeks, ready to spill over, and the things she’s been telling herself – things reinforced by her ex-husband – start to pour out of her mouth, a litany of _reasons_ , “But, I’m not,” she blinks, trying again as her voice breaks, “I can’t keep—”

Arthur interrupts her, his tone clear and concise. Hard, but not angry, “Two and a half years.” He states it like it’s an explanation and Alex furrows her brow.

“What?”

“I bloody _hate_ Jackson Browne – all your music, really. It’s plain dreadful.” At her shocked expression, he laughs, shaking his head. He fixes his gaze on her, his blue eyes burning into hers, “Two and a half years – I’ve been _enamored_ of you, Alex; I’ve been going to concerts I hate with you for no other reason than I love spending time with you. For two and a half years I’ve thought of little else _but_ you, so don’t tell me you can’t keep someone’s interest. Don’t tell me you’re not capable, don’t tell me you don’t deserve it.”

“You…?” She stares at him, dumbfounded.

“Love you?” At her widened eyes and slight nod, he lets out a sigh, “Yes. Very much.”

“But I’m…”

Arthur smiles at her gently, “Yes,” he nods, “And it doesn’t matter a bit to me, Alex. I fell for you all the same.” He shrugs, “And I’d do it again and again.” He ducks his head to meet her gaze, which has fallen suddenly in her lap. When he speaks, his voice is raw with emotion, but filled with kindness, understanding, “It isn’t me, and I’ve come to terms with that over the last few months. I understand that. But let it be _someone_.”

Alex feels the tears slide down her cheeks and Arthur reaches out and catches a one on his thumb. She looks up and smiles at him before she leans over and presses a soft kiss to his lips, noticing when she pulls back how his eyes have fluttered closed and he leans into her and she wonders now how she never saw it before, “I’m sorry.” She whispers.

Arthur’s eyes stay shut, and he shakes his head, “I’m not.” He opens his eyes and they’re a stormy mixture of love, pain, and hope – and she realizes that all of it is for her, “Go to him.” He speaks softly, “Let yourself be – let yourself be happy, Alex. God knows you deserve it more than anyone I bloody know.” He stands, letting his hand brush gently down her cheek before he walks back over to Karen, speaking to her in dulcet tones.

Arthur – sweet, lovable Arthur – has been in love with her for _years_ and she never saw it. It breaks her heart at the same time it feels like it sews it back together, because she knows what it takes to love someone like that; she knows how exactly easy it isn’t. To love someone enough to let them go – to say ‘find every happiness, even if it isn’t with me.’ It takes courage and bravery and in another life, maybe it could have been so. But in this life, here, her broken heart isn’t his, even if his now-broken heart belongs to her.

Alex sighs, turning to look out the window, then back at her drawing. She can’t work right now, she can’t concentrate on anything except the weight of her heavy heart so she picks up her bag, says a quiet goodbye to Karen and Arthur – enveloping him in a tight hug before she leaves – and heads out into the city.

She takes herself to lunch, where she does not think about Matt. She takes herself to coffee, where she does not think about Matt. She takes herself to two museums, where she does not think about Matt. She takes herself to a little art gallery she’s always loved, where she does not think about Matt. She takes herself to an early dinner, and as she watches the sun crawl back into its bed for the night, she does not think about Matt.

As her waiter tops off her wine, she realizes she’s spent the whole day trying to distract herself from her feelings – trying to pretend they aren’t there; she’s spent the entire day trying to not think about Matt, but he’s all she sees. In an artifact in a museum, she sees him – wondering what he would think about it, what joke he would make. In a painting in the gallery, she sees his long chin, his scruffy hair in the blurry face of a man that couldn’t possibly be him. She sees street art on the sidewalk, crude spray paint old and fading and somehow she _still_ thinks about him.

None of it is rational, but he is the only thing on her heart as she walks around this city.

By the time she’s done with dinner, she’s decided – she will go to him. She doesn’t know what she’ll say exactly, she just knows she needs to _see_ him, to _tell_ him that she lied, that he means something to her – that she sees his face in things that can’t possibly hold it.

When Alex walks out of the restaurant, she realizes she’s been getting increasingly closer to his flat all day, and she’s in his neighborhood now. She walks down the street to his flat, feeling the nerves flutter unexpectedly in her stomach. When she reaches his doorstep, she pulls her hand back and knocks tentatively, shuffling on her feet a bit as she waits, straining to hear any noise inside.

It’s silent, and she knocks again – she feels the disappointment rush through her, and she wonders if she should take it as a sign from the universe and go home, to forget about this notion, forget about _him_. But she’s been this brave and she knows if she goes home she will spend the night talking herself out of this, talking herself out of him.

With a sigh, she walks down the three stairs that lead to his flat and makes her way across the street to a little bar.

He’d taken her to this very bar once for a nightcap and they’d stumbled across the street back to his flat scarcely able to keep their hands off one another on the way. They’d knocked through his front door, stumbling to his bedroom where they’d fallen into bed and he’d made her scream his name so loudly his neighbor knocked on the wall and told them to ‘keep it the hell down’. _He’s just jealous_ , Matt had whispered, _he’s seen you leaving my flat_ , and Alex giggled, slapping his arm and turning them over so she was on top, riding him. She made him scream her name just as loudly as she’d screamed his, but the neighbor had given up knocking by then.

Now, Alex settles herself onto a barstool, orders herself a glass of white wine, and spends fifteen minutes running her finger around the rim of the glass, too nervous to actually drink it. She still doesn’t know what she’ll say when she sees Matt; every scenario she plays in her head is not quite enough, and she tries very hard to not worry that he _won’t_ want to see her at all. If she thinks about that possibility too, she’s never going to go through with it.

She turns around, wine in hand, and surveys the bar. It’s not too crowded, but a healthy mix of people still surround her, some laughing, some dancing, some huddled in corners having what appear to be very serious conversations. Her eyes fall on a couple in the corner, the man is against the wall, and his head is leaning into the woman’s ear, whispering something. The woman, wearing a tight dress revealing a gorgeous body, laughs, tipping her head back, sending her long dark hair cascading down her back before she slaps him on the shoulder, shaking her head. He pulls away from her then, smirking as he runs a hand through his hair, and when Alex finally sees his face, she feels her heart plummet deep into her stomach.

_Matt_.

It’s Matt she just saw whispering into the ear of a girl in a skin-tight dress who looks to be about half Alex’s own age, if that; Alex feels her mouth drop open a bit in shock, and she wants to turn around so he doesn’t see her but she’s frozen in place, staring as the girl leans forward, pressing the front of her body into his.

Alex clutches the stem of her wine glass as her heart pounds in her chest, blood rushing in her ears, and is just about to wrench her gaze away and get _the hell_ out of the bar when Matt’s eyes drift up and suddenly lock on _her_.

He freezes, his eyes wide as he registers her. Alex moves quickly then; she reaches behind her and sets her wine back on the bar, turns on the stool, and makes a hasty exit weaving through the crowd towards the door. Her eyes _burn_ and her face does too because how could she have been so stupid? Of _course_ he’s not pining for her, of course he moved on just as quickly as she’d thought he might. Why wouldn’t he? Why would he waste one second of his youth pining for a nearly fifty-year-old woman? Why, when there are so many younger women eager and willing to help him misspend it.

Alex is halfway down the block when she feels a hand on her elbow, fingers curling around her flesh and she knows it’s Matt. She stops, but doesn’t turn around, pressing her eyes closed against the tears threatening to spill over her lids. She’s given enough tears to the men in her life, and she doesn’t want to give any more, but her heart is shattered in her chest.

She feels him move around her and stand in front of her, but she still doesn’t look at him, can’t bear to.

“Alex,” he implores, his hand still on her elbow, “What are you – will you _look at me_ , please?”

She pries her eyes open, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay, thankful for the darkness that surrounds them. She doesn’t say anything, just waits, trying not to concentrate on the feel of his fingers against her skin where he still holds her elbow.

“What are you doing here?” Matt asks, his tone gentle.

Alex looks at him, at his eyes searching hers, and she wants to tell him the truth – tell him why she came to find him tonight – _because you’re in my heart, and I think I maybe love you, too_. Funny, how exactly what she would say comes to her now when she can’t say it at all because all she can see is his mouth pressed up against the ear of some young girl with a body Alex didn’t even have when she was that girl’s age. He’d done exactly what Alex had told him to do – found someone his own age, so she wonders why it hurts her so much. She tries not to dwell on the fact that it’s probably because she longed to believe him and hates when she’s right sometimes.

She doesn’t trust her voice, but she speaks anyway, “I came to your flat – I was waiting for you,” she sighs, “I wanted to see if…” she trails off, shaking her head, “We could be – friends?” She finishes, and of course that’s not at all why she came to find him. She came to see if they could _try_ to be together, but she can’t very well say that now after seeing what she did.

Matt’s hand drops from her elbow and he looks at her, peeking out from under his fringe, “Oh,” he sounds disappointed, “That wasn’t what it looked like back there – I wasn’t…” he trails off now, sighing in what sounds a bit like defeat.

“You don’t have to explain to me – she’s – she’s lovely, Matt, and I understand. Truly.” She gathers her strength and leans up, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, “I’ll – I’ll see you around?”

Matt nods, something still behind his eyes that she cannot read for all the tears in hers, “Sure. Yeah – ‘course.”

Forcing a smile, she turns and walks away from him, her feet carrying her down the sidewalk and away from her humiliation in this moment. When she gets to her car, she sits inside of it, hunching herself over the steering wheel as she cries. What an idiot she’d been – of _course_ it hadn’t been serious to him, of _course_ he’d found someone else already. _Of course_.

Alex starts her car and drives the few miles back to her flat. The lights are blurry from the tears in her eyes but she can’t stop crying and she can’t stop driving, wanting nothing more than to be tucked away into her little flat, ensconced in her bed far away from her shame, as though that would not follow her into the quiet moments.

She will still think of him in her bed, she knows, but eventually sleep will show mercy and take her.

When she’s finally home, she doesn’t bother with her bedtime routine, crawling straight into her bed and pulling the covers up tightly around her body, burrowing her head down into the pillow that has finally stopped smelling of him after three gentle washes. She’d been trying to hold on to it, his scent; she’d been trying to let it linger, but it is gone now – just like he is.

Alex drifts to sleep, wondering why it still hurts so much, why she’s even surprised at the way happiness bleeds from her life, leaving her with a gaping wound she can never seem to bandage fast enough.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, he has ruined everything. Every little thing – he knew it the moment he saw Alex’s eyes latched on to him as some woman whose name he didn’t even know clung to him in the dingy corner of the bar across from his flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind words - they mean so much.
> 
> I went into the shop to finish my tattoo today, so thought the update was fitting.

Oh, he has ruined everything. Every little thing – he knew it the moment he saw Alex’s eyes latched on to him as some woman whose name he didn’t even know clung to him in the dingy corner of the bar across from his flat. He’d been sitting in his flat for weeks, only leaving to go on the few auditions he’d submitted himself for. Tonight he decided he’d had quite enough of moping around – he decided to go to the little bar across from his flat, just to get out of his own head for a few hours.

It’s a little dive bar that had quickly become his favorite when he moved in – it reminded him of home in a roundabout way; it gave him an odd sort of comfort, despite the ache of the memories that lived inside of it. It didn’t much matter, if he was honest. Those memories – memories of Alex, of her skin under his hands, her bright smile – lived inside of him always, didn’t matter where he was.

He’d set himself up at the bar tonight, nursing a beer for an hour or so before a girl with long dark hair and wearing a sinfully tight dress had come up to him. She had big brown eyes, a slender body, tan skin – she was gorgeous, Matt knew, and even a few months ago she would have been exactly his type, everything he was looking for. Looking at the girl tonight, though, he’d just seen everything she was missing – he’d only seen who she wasn’t.

But who this girl wasn’t didn’t want him anymore – had _told_ him in no uncertain terms to move on.

So nothing stopped him from flirting back with her, and it didn’t take long for the two of them to make their way to a darkened corner of the bar. It didn’t take long for her to put her lips on his neck, for his hand to snake around to her lower back as he whispered something flirty and seductive in her ear, her laugh grating instead of a melodious sound that captivated him with its smoky tone.

Eager to forget that laugh, the curls of the woman who held it, the curves of the body that gave life to it, Matt lets the nameless woman press herself up against him. He’s in the midst of telling this woman a harmless white lie, his lips against her ear, when he sees Alex.

He thinks it’s a mirage – that _she_ is a mirage – that his aching heart has somehow conjured her image, that the sight before him is his broken mind playing tricks on him, but when he blinks and she remains, he knows she’s real. Alex is here.

Alex is sitting at the bar, watching him, frozen in place. Matt’s stomach lurches as he watches in horror as Alex moves from the bar, hastily moving towards the exit. Matt doesn’t speak to the woman he’s with, he just extricates himself from her slender arms and follows Alex out of the bar and into the night. The woman cries out for him, but it doesn’t matter. He can only hear Alex’s footsteps carrying her away from him. It should be an impossibility, he shouldn’t be able to hear anything over the din of the bar but he can. He can hear her footsteps and every one she takes puts another crack in his heart because he knows.

He knows what she saw and he knows how bad this is, given everything that’s happened between them.

Matt tries to explain himself – tries to tell her that it wasn’t what it looked like, not really. But he can’t find the words, they are lost under the sadness he has carried with him since the moment he walked out of her studio. He just stands there helpless, the pavement hard under his feet as he hears the word _friends_ fall from her full lips.

And that word is a dagger that startles him into thinking he can finally find his voice.

But before he can form the words he longs to say, she is walking away from him, her feet carrying her down the sidewalk, around the corner, and still farther away from him.

He stands, frozen, and watches the empty street corner for a moment, willing her to come back, to run into his arms like she’s read the words on his heart without him even having to speak them. But she doesn’t come back – the street corner stays empty, just like his heart without her.

Matt doesn’t go back into the bar, doesn’t even look at it as he walks past, walking the short and lonely path back to his empty flat. He sullenly unlocks the door, stepping inside and flicking on the light, slamming the door behind him. The noise earns him a knock on the wall from his surly neighbor, but Matt doesn’t have it in him tonight to knock back.

Instead, he toes off his shoes and sits down on his couch. Propping his feet up on his glass coffee table, he presses his eyes shut as his head falls back against the couch. The minute his eyes snap shut he sees her – wild curls around her face, blue-green eyes wide and laughing, her perfect lips curved into a mysterious smile, his heart in her hands. It’s all he’s seen for weeks when he closes his eyes, and he wonders how long it will be until he stops – he’d gone to that bar tonight to try to take a step closer to that day, to the night where he won’t dream about her voice in his ear, her naked body pressed up against his.

After seeing her tonight, he knows now, that day will never come. And even if he can’t have her, even if she won’t give herself to him, he doesn’t want that day anyway. He has already given himself to her and he can’t get the bits of himself back, and he doesn’t really want them; even if she doesn’t keep them, they are hers. Everything he has given her, she can keep; and suddenly he knows the truth: he will keep giving until it is enough, and if he reaches the end of himself and it’s still not enough – well.

Matt’s eyes fly open and he stands, making his way to the little secretary desk in the corner of his living room. Pulling the desk open, he pulls the chain on a banker’s lamp and sits down, pulling his near-full sketchpad out and flipping to a blank page. He picks up his pencil and begins to draw, lead scraping against the heavy weight of the paper.

He draws until he runs out of paper in his sketchbook and then he opens a new one. He draws until he’s broken the tip of his pencil off more times than he can count; pencil shavings stick to his socks as he erases a line and draws it again, his hand rubbing against the thick paper. He draws until his hand cramps, but he doesn’t stop, shaking and flexing his hand at regular intervals so he can keep going. He draws until he sees the sun peeking through his blinds, his eyes tired and red because as he draws he also cries, tears spilling onto his paper and though he tries to delicately wipe them away, some of the lead still smears, distorting bits of the drawing with his unbearable sadness.

He draws until he has the perfect image, and when he does, he finally closes his sketchbook and crawls into bed, pulling the covers up around himself as the sun shines through his window, cleansing and bright – he closes his eyes and sees her, but for the first time in weeks, the sight _comforts_ him.

It takes him three days with his drawing pinned to the wall above his bed for him to work up the courage to call Karen, to beg her for her help. She agrees quicker than he’d thought she would have. He’d assumed he’d have to offer all sorts of favors, but she doesn’t even make him beg, not really, and Matt wonders _why_.

Three days after _that_ , he finds himself standing outside Kingston Tattoo Parlour just as he had months ago, the same butterflies flitting around in his stomach – but they’re different this time, the butterflies, bigger because they know precisely what they’re getting into – precisely the thing they’ve had to live without.

Matt punches in the code he knows they haven’t changed and makes his way up the stairs; they creak under the weight of his impossible hope as he climbs. He stops in front of the French doors, remembering the first time he stumbled through them and into her life. He wants to make sure she never regrets that day, knowing already that he never will regret it, no matter what happens now.

Taking a deep steadying breath, he carefully opens the doors and steps inside, clutching his sketchbook to his chest like a lifeline. Alex glances up from where she sits at her station and she stills as her eyes widen. Matt glances in the corner to see Arthur and Karen watching him quietly.

“Matt, what are you doing here? Do you – did you forget something?” Alex asks, her voice quiet across the studio.

Matt steps further into the studio, “I haven’t forgotten a thing, Kingston,” he looks at her, at the old bandana tying her hair away from her face and feels like he can’t breathe from the weight of her beauty in this moment.

“I have a client,” she looks at the clock above her station, “Right now, actually.”

He nods, “You do,” he glances at Karen, smiling a bit, “Me.”

Alex looks from him to Karen, and Karen nods guiltily, “Sorry,” Karen says, though she doesn’t actually sound sorry at all. “He called and – well, you’ve been… and I just…” Karen flounders for the words. Not finding them, she shrugs, slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder, “We’ll see you tomorrow, Alex,” Karen nods to Darvill who takes one last long look at Alex and then follows behind Karen out the French doors and down the stairs.

A silence hangs in the air between he and Alex and Matt clears his throat, running his hand through his hair while his other hand still clutches his sketchbook to his chest.

“What are you really doing here, Matt?” Alex asks, leaning back in her chair and eyeing him skeptically.

“I’m committing,” Matt explains simply, “To a tattoo,” his eyes bore into hers, “Hopefully more.”

She sighs, “Matt…”

Matt shakes his head, “Don’t you want to see my drawing, Kingston?” He takes a few steps forward until he’s standing in front of her, “Don’t you want to see what I want you to tattoo on me?” He opens his sketchbook to the middle, and then holds it out to her.

Alex doesn’t move for a moment, just looks at him, her eyes sweeping over his face before she reluctantly reaches out and takes his sketchbook from him.

Her eyes drop from his to the sketchbook, and she scans the page slowly, taking the drawing in. He watches her expression, her eyes widening a bit as she looks at it – finally, she looks up at him and he can’t tell if it’s just the light in the studio reflecting but her eyes look a bit wet.

“You want me to – tattoo this on you?” When he nods, she hands the sketchbook back to him, “Do you have a stencil?”

“I want you to draw it on, actually,” he clears his throat, “Freehand.”

Alex licks her lips, “Matt, whatever this is – you don’t have to – you don’t have to prove anything to me or…”

Matt tilts his head to the side, gentleness in his tone, “Don’t I?” He sets his sketchbook on her workstation and sits down in her chair, holding out the underside of his left forearm, “Tattoo me, Kingston,” he licks his lips, “I want this,” And he hopes that she hears what he doesn’t say: _I want to carry you with me, even still_.

Alex tugs on her bottom lip with her teeth, deep in thought. Finally, she reaches over to her station and pulls out a red sharpie; taking the cap off, she brings the felt tip to his skin. Looking at his drawing once more, she begins creating arcing and sweeping lines on his forearm, the sharpie tickling him in some places. When she’s done, he looks down at it – it’s his drawing, but she’s made it her own – when the ink burns into his skin there will be no doubt whose tattoo this is: _hers_ , _on_ _his body_.

Alex prepares her ink and needles, chewing on her lip the entire time. She slides gloves over her hands and turns to look at him, tattoo gun poised. She turns it on, and Matt feels the adrenaline slide through his veins.

She quirks her eyebrow at him, “Ready, darling?”

Matt grins at the nickname falling from her mouth, “Always.”

Alex grins back, and he doesn’t know what this means – doesn’t know if she understands the weight of his gesture, but he’s got hours with her now as she marks him for life – as though she hadn’t already – and if he walks out of here alone tonight, at least he’ll have laid his heart bare.

She drops the needle so it hovers just above his arm and she looks at him one more time – at his nod, she turns the tattoo gun on and dips it into his skin.

The needle licks at his flesh, and it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it might – it seems that every bit of his pain is dulled at her hand.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You okay?” She asks when she gets close to the bend in his arm.
> 
> “In your hands, I am.” Matt answers, and his voice is so solemn, sounds so true that she can’t even roll her eyes at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, the end. 
> 
> I had an absolute blast writing for Mattex - thank you all so, so much for your readership. <3

The Giving Tree.

Alex would recognize it anywhere – it’s the same story she used to read to her daughter at night, the one she reads on her own sometimes now when her daughter is away. It makes her cry, and every time she reads it she takes the story a different way – a story of hope, a story of sadness, a story of loss, a story of love. It’s beautiful and it’s painful and it hurts her so much some days and heals her completely on others.

And now her needle is carving it into Matt’s flesh and she can’t decide what exactly that means – what he’s trying to tell her with this gesture. She works on the tattoo, glancing up at him to watch his nostrils flare when she hits a sensitive spot. He holds perfectly still, though, his hand curling in on itself a bit when the pain gets too much. She reads him and backs off, moving to a different part of his arm.

“You okay?” She asks when she gets close to the bend in his arm.

“In your hands, I am.” Matt answers, and his voice is so solemn, sounds so true that she can’t even roll her eyes at him.

Instead, she feels her heart flutter in her chest and she willfully ignores it, dropping her eyes back down to his arm and dragging the needle across his soft, pale flesh.

Alex doesn’t usually ask, figuring that if her clients want her to know the meaning behind a tattoo they’ll tell her, but these are extenuating circumstances so she sweeps the needle over his skin and finally asks him the question in a quiet voice.

“Why the Giving Tree, then, darling?” The nickname has come back so easily, and maybe she should stop, but it feels so lovely rolling off her tongue.

“You know why,” Matt says, his gaze intent as he looks at her.

She pauses, lifting the needle from his skin as the nerves slip into her stomach, “Do I?”

“You’ve not had enough of it in your life, have you?” He looks at her and she can feel her hand start to shake so she pulls the needle farther away from his skin, “You’re the one that does the giving – you give of yourself until you feel like there’s nothing left, until you can’t tell where you begin and the ground you’ve been run into ends.” He lifts his right hand out and lifts her chin with his index finger, “I _love_ you. You can take everything I have, Alex. Every single thing – it’s yours.”

She swallows around the emotion in her throat, “Matt…”

“Finish the tattoo,” he whispers, “Then we’ll talk.”

So, she does – she spends hours on the tattoo: shading, coloring, doing line work. Through the buzz of the needle, a charged silence hangs in the air between them. She feels it seep into her lungs until she’s convinced it’s the only thing she’s breathing in, the only thing she’s exhaling. It’s a heady mixture of adrenaline, desire, pain, and this unnamable _thing_ that passes between them always.

When she is finished, she wipes the tattoo with antiseptic, and looks at him, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“All done.” She announces, watching him.

He stands and heads to the full length mirror near her station, stepping closer to it to examine her work. His jaw drops, and he lifts his arm up to view it from a different angle.

“It’s _beautiful_ ,” he exhales, turning his head as he looks at it. Suddenly, a furrow settles itself into his brow and he looks at the tattoo, shaking his head.

Alex looks at him with concern, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Matt walks back over to the chair, “It’s – well, it’s not quite done yet.” At her look of confusion, Matt reaches for her tattoo gun, “May I?”

She nods, though she is still utterly confused as she watches him pick up her tattoo gun, testing the weight of it in his hands. He turns it on, getting a feel for its speed.

Matt turns his wrist back on himself and fixes it so that Alex is standing at an angle from which she can’t possibly see what he’s doing – she only hears the tattoo gun buzzing as he marks himself.

After a few moments, his tongue darting between his lips in concentration and making Alex smile even through her confusion and nerves, Matt sets her tattoo gun back down on the counter. He looks at her, his eyes holding some sort of secret she has yet to decipher.

Finally, he holds his arm out to her – there, in clear but messy scrawl on the trunk of the tree she’d tattooed on his arm he’d written something, a promise: _Me + A.K._

Alex gasps as her eyes skate across his flesh and her eyes fly up to meet his, “Oh, Matt, you absolute _idiot_.”

Matt’s gaze burns into her, “Do you understand now, Alex? I am _yours_. _No one else’s_ , and I haven’t been since the moment I walked into this shop. And even if you don’t want me the way that I want you – the way that I want you to, I will always have this; you’ve marked me now – I’ve marked myself _for_ you. I will always look at my arm and know that you exist.” He swallows, his gaze still hot as he looks at her, “ _Do_ you want me Alex?”

The silence stretches between them and Alex draws her lip into her mouth, worrying it with her teeth – of _course_ she wants him. She’d wanted him one way or another since the moment he stumbled into her shop all hapless limbs and floppy hair.

She feels the fear in her stomach, she feels it course through her body until every cell of her being is alight with it. He was right that day; she is _scared_ of this man who wants to give her everything – because she hasn’t taken in a very long time. She’s always given of herself until there is scarcely anything left.

Before Matt, sometimes all she saw when she looked in the mirror was the hollowed out place where her real self used to be.

Matt gave that back to her, every piece of herself and then some; and she does – she wants him – she wants this man who has given up all of his fear to come into her shop and have her mark him in ways that cannot be erased.

Matt looks at her sadly, mistaking her silence for the wrong answer; he starts to turn away when she finally finds her voice, the same one that has been crawling up her throat to yell the words she’d felt since she met him:

“Of _course_ I want you, darling,” she steps forward then, and his face freezes somewhere between melancholy and joy, “I _love you_ , Matt, and maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe everything between us is wrong like everyone says, but it’s too late for that now, darling. I’m too far gone – I’m too far _yours_.”

It’s not a sweeping declaration, but it’s the truth as she knows it.

At her words, Matt surges forward, his mouth finding hers, kissing her desperately – he slides his hands into her hair and holds her head to him as his tongue slips into her mouth. He tastes like the opposite of regret, like everything she’s forgotten she deserves. He tastes like a reminder and she gives herself to him, letting him search her mouth as she sighs against him.

Matt’s hands glide down her neck, over her shoulders, and settle on her waist, his thumbs grazing the skin underneath her shirt gently.

Alex moves her hand under the hem of his shirt, her hands skating over his abdomen, feeling his muscles ripple under her touch. Matt groans as her nails rake across his flesh and she feels him buck his hips into her. Smiling into his kiss, she moves her hand down to cup him through his jeans and he gasps into her mouth, the sharp intake of air sending a pang of arousal through her body.

She moves her hands to the button on his jeans, undoing it with deft fingers before she drags his fly down slowly.

Matt chuckles, the sound deep and sexy as it sends a small shiver down her spine, “Here? Now?”

“It’s my shop, darling,” Alex smirks, “I can do whatever I want in here,” she lowers her voice, looking at him through hooded eyes, “And right now I want to do _you_ right here on the hardwood floor of the shop I’ve spent my life building.”

The breath hitches in his throat and he reaches for her, his fingertips brushing her sides as he lifts her shirt over her head – she isn’t wearing a bra and his eyes drop to her breasts as he licks his lips.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, as he reaches his hand out to caress her, his palm warm and gentle, “Love you so much, sweetheart. So _fucking_ much.”

Alex smiles, taking his shirt off and pressing herself against his bare chest as she loops her arms around his neck and kisses him again, softly, sweetly, pausing only to murmur against his lips, “Love you too, darling. I’ll never pretend I don’t again, never try to talk myself out of it ever again. Out of you.”

Matt lays her down gently on the floor and they kiss and touch and whisper promises they will spend countless years keeping.

When they’re finally naked, Alex straddles Matt, her knees on either side of him as she sinks down over his length, moving slowly. She moves herself up and down gently, grinding on the down stroke as Matt’s fingertips dig lightly into her hips until all she can feel is _him_.

She leans down and kisses him, her tongue sliding into his mouth, matching the rhythm of their hips until she feels his hand slip between their bodies to touch her and she feels herself break over him, his name spilling from her mouth as she comes. Matt follows just after, her name from his lips carving itself directly into her heart where she can keep it forever like the art they both now wear on their bodies.

After their ecstasy subsides, Alex rolls over, breathless, and they laugh – the sound fills the studio, echoes off the walls filled with paintings and art and _life_. Their backs are pressed into the hardwood floor and as Matt’s fingertips dance along her shoulder, playing with the ends of her curls, only one thought carries through Alex’s mind like a lantern on the darkest night of the year, brilliant and bright despite the utter darkness that surrounds it.

It’s the slightly transposed last line of a story that can be taken so many different ways, but which will now only ever be the truth for her:

_And she was happy_.

 

 

 


End file.
